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LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


THE HAPPY FOOL 
THE KING’S MEN 
PETER PARAGON 

ETC. ETC. 






LOOKING AFTER 

JOAN 



JOHN PALMER 



NEW YORK 

HARCOTJRT, BRACE AND COMPANY 






•» 


First published in 1923 




Printed in Great Britain at 

The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, Willi&m Brendon & Son, £,td, 


There is no allusion in this story to any exist¬ 
ing person, government, or institution. 

Fiction is always so much more probable than 
fact that in the interests of credibility alone it is 
well to keep as strictly as possible within its limits. 

John Palmer. 

Geneva, 

July, 1923. 



















LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


CHAPTER I 

§1 

I N the village of Meadwell in Sussex there was 
recently a letter-box which, by some strange 
departmental oversight, still bore the legend 
of Queen Victoria, though her grandson had been 
reigning for several years. Nor was this all. The 
name of Victoria, still faintly described on the 
letter-box of Meadwell, was also inscribed, and far 
more legibly, on many of its hearts and thresholds. 
No one knew better than Joan that, under the roof 
where she would sleep to-night for the last time 
previous to her great adventure, no other sovereign 
had as yet been allowed to rule. Victoria’s por¬ 
trait still confronted her from over the mantelpiece 
of her room, and downstairs in the dining-room 
there were engravings of Melbourne and Disraeli 
hanging as when her father had died. 

To-morrow, however, she would be in Paris, 
unaccompanied by a single member of her family, 
living in an hotel, a free and independent person, 
with work of her own to do, and money of her own 
to spend. 


2 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


It was Barbara’s doing. Twelve months pre¬ 
viously Joan had lost her father, an unsuccessful 
merchant, who had left his widow little more than 
the house in which she lived. Joan had, therefore, 
been obliged to learn some useful craft. Barbara, 
an experienced official, who for the last few years 
had served His Majesty’s Government at home and 
abroad, with power to recommend candidates for 
posts of considerable responsibility and honour, had 
advised a college in London in which young women 
of education were trained to act as secretaries and 
librarians and personal assistants of the great, and, 
at the right moment, she had come forward with 
a vacancy in the secretariat of an important 
Minister. 

Thus, almost before her mother was aware of it, 
Joan, who had hitherto lived almost exclusively 
under the protection of Queen Victoria, had entered 
the service of King George, and almost before the 
full significance of this new allegiance had been 
realised, had found herself in possession of a pass¬ 
port and a first-class ticket to a foreign capital. 
All had happened so swiftly and so naturally, and 
so clearly in obedience to economic necessity, that 
no one at Meadwell had been able to measure the 
event or to question its propriety. 

Anyone watching Joan in the activities of pack¬ 
ing her trunk and preparing to sleep for the last 
night in her mother’s house might reasonably have 
felt some misgiving at the prospect of despatching 
her into a world so entirely different from that of 
which she was at present aware. She was so 
obviously unfledged. The excitement in the eyes 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


3 


that looked back at her out of the mirror were 
clearly untroubled by the least alloy of reflection 
or experience. She was pretty, and pleasantly 
aware of her prettiness, but there was as yet no 
hint of a deliberate intention to charm. She en¬ 
joyed her good looks candidly for their own sake, 
and wore her ribbons with the harmless vanity of a 
baby. The smile with which she greeted herself in 
the looking-glass expressed a very natural pleasure 
in the contemplation of an agreeable object. There 
was no hint of the wish to attract, scarcely an 
intimation of sex. Her hair, which was of a pure 
flaxen, escaped from the comb like a fine mist in the 
light of her candles, enforcing with ethereal sug¬ 
gestions the innocence of the eyes and mouth. 
Here was clearly a girl who should have had a 
battalion of big brothers, period 1885, with side 
whiskers, to frighten away marauders. She was so 
clearly untouched and unaware. The impression 
that she needed protection was reinforced by the 
instant impression she gave that, though untouched, 
she was accessible, and that, though unaware, 
recognition was in ambush. 

It will be objected that there could be no grown 
girl as innocent as Joan, and no village as remote 
as Meadwell. 

The war, it is said, has brought the present 
unusually near, and made it difficult for any person 
or place to miss the spirit of the hour. Meadwell, 
though its letter-box had been neglected by some 
curious departmental oversight, had sent its men 
to the war, and mobilised its women for the usual 
services. Was it possible that there should be 


4 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


within its confines a girl who did not know as much 
about everything as was good for her ? 

But innocence is not a question of knowing 
certain things, or even of having shared in certain 
experiences. It is an attitude, a quality of mind. 
Knowledge does not destroy, or even impair it. 
Experience leaves it with a bloom unfingered. It 
has a hundred varieties. There is an innocence 
that remains to the end incurious and unaware. 
Life passes it by, so that even the passions of birth, 
marriage and death are accepted without enlighten¬ 
ment as things that necessarily come and go. 
From this condition, which is merely negative, we 
may range through every kind and degree of 
innocence, finding an unexpected vestal in the 
heart of a mother. 

Joan had done most of the usual things. She 
had knitted and nursed, and talked with wounded 
soldiers. She had danced with young men at the 
local hall, she had even lived in Highgate for a 
while, going up to her classes in the City every 
morning and returning at night. She had seen tens of 
thousands of people moving about their business 
and pleasure, but she had so far remained in¬ 
curious. There were questions she had never asked. 
She had been content to dwell upon the surface, 
interested but not iniquisitive, avoiding the less 
obvious implications. 

The surface she had seen was that of the country 
village, sufficiently urban to have lost its rustic 
character without acquiring anything very definite 
in return ; of the tea-shop and cheap restaurant; 
of the suburban train and of streets at the hour 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


5 


when people were crowding to and from their work. 
It was not a surface that tempted investigation, or 
put to her any disturbing or inescapable problems. 
She had learned little either from life in general or 
from her particular associates. Her friend at the 
college had been a dull girl, without any wish to 
lead or to inform. 

The only vivid and surprising intrusions had 
indeed been due to Barbara. But Barbara had 
at an early date been swept away to far and sur¬ 
prising adventures. It was only when Barbara 
came on holiday to Meadwell that the old associa¬ 
tion was renewed, and these interventions had 
been too infrequent and too brief to influence her 
friend. 

Anatomised, Joan presented a pair of dark hazel 
eyes, which strangely contradicted the fairness of 
her complexion. Under light eyebrows and flaxen 
hair, they gave to her face an elfin look, as though 
they did not altogether belong. The rest of her 
was commonplace feminine, a nose that wilfully 
avoided the classic, a full mouth closing tightly 
upon white teeth, a firm chin lifted upon a slender 
throat. It was the eyes that raised all this from 
confectionery to the level of a charm that would 
always elude the analyst. The rest of her presented 
a fatally sanguine type, but one felt instinctively 
that Joan, with eyes that suggested a startled 
spirit imprisoned in that fleshly white and rose, 
was not born to be either victim or vampire. 

There came a slight knock to her door, and in a 
another moment her mother had entered the room. 
Mrs. Weaver had probably deprecated King 


6 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Edward. She had almost certainly not yet re¬ 
cognised King George. Quite a number of social 
revolutions had passed by her unregarded. She was 
the accepted genius of the room where Joan had 
slept every normal night of her young life. Some 
day perhaps Joan herself would present that same 
comfortable appearance of a good wife and mother, 
ample but not unwieldy, in black satin relieved 
with a fichu of white lace, a face that was gradually 
losing its features in order to present a general aspect 
of kindness and content. Of this, however, one could 
not be altogether sure. Mrs. Weaver was fair like 
her daughter, and of a sanguine complexion, but 
there could never have been anything in the least 
elfin in her face or character. Her eyes were a 
complement and not a contradiction to the rest of 
her, of the pale grey one would expect to find. 

She came into her daughter’s room at this mo¬ 
ment in a mood of mild misgiving. She had just 
begun to realise that Joan was going to Paris. Had 
she not written the labels, seven or eight of them, 
in a round motherly hand, each with an increasing 
amazement that this event had really come to pass? 

For Mrs. Weaver, Paris was pre-eminently a city 
of the primrose path. Even its cooking was perverse, 
transforming wholesome eggs of the barndoor fowl 
into ceufs d la cocotte or worse. 

“ Why, Joan,” she said on entering, “ have you 
finished packing ? ” 

She rearranged some articles in the big trunk, 
not because they needed it, but because, having 
spent most of her life in arranging things, it was 
difficult to refrain. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


7 


“ I hope you have got everything you really 
want,” she continued anxiously. 

“It is so difficult to know, and anything might 
happen in Paris,” she concluded, looking nervously 
at her daughter. 

“ Why, mother,” said Joan, turning from the 
glass which assured her that preparations for the 
night were complete, “ I believe you are worrying.” 

“ No,” said Mrs. Weaver, “ but it’s rather an 
undertaking, when you come to think of it.” 

Mrs. Weaver glanced at the portrait of Queen 
Victoria, and realised perhaps for the first time that 
Queen Victoria had passed away. Nevertheless, 
the British Government endured, and the British 
Government had lately got into the habit of pro¬ 
viding against every possible mischance. She took 
her daughter’s passport from the table, and read 
with a growing sense of security the noble phrases 
in which His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State 
did request and require, in the name of His Majesty’s 
Government, all those whom it might concern to 
allow Miss Joan Weaver to pass freely without let 
or hindrance, and to afford her every assistance 
and protection of which she might stand in need. 

Mrs. Weaver went to the bed and turned back 
the coverings. She ascertained that the hot water 
bottle was really hot. 

“ Come along, Joan dear,” she said, “ and let me 
make you comfortable. It’s for the last time,” she 
added, as Joan came sensuously to rest in the 
warm linen. 

Mrs. Weaver bent and kissed her daughter, whose 
arms went about her with the natural ease of long 


8 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


habit and practised affection. She looked a moment 
into the eyes of her child, finding something there 
so eager and curious and unfulfilled that the 
mother’s instinct sprang alive, sensitive and fore¬ 
boding. Obscurely she suffered a pang forgotten 
in the flesh, but in the spirit renewed. It came to 
her unawares, and yet was as old and inevitable 
as motherhood. It was as though her child were 
being born again into the world. 

There was no reason, it might be said, why Mrs. 
Weaver should burst suddenly into tears, but Joan 
was already sufficiently a woman to understand. 

“ I shall be all right, mother,” she said with im¬ 
mense conviction. “ Indeed I shall.” 

And then Joan discovered that she too was 
crying. 


§ 2 

At seven o’clock on the evening of the following 
day a tall girl, not unobserved by the passengers 
who crowded the terminus at Waterloo, was stand¬ 
ing on one of the arrival platforms in an attitude 
of unflurried expectation. She stood erect, hands 
behind her back, at the extreme outward end. Joan 
might arrive at any moment from Meadwell. Mean¬ 
while Barbara, her friend, was well content. Water¬ 
loo was comparatively dull as a railway station, 
but railway stations were as champagne to Barbara. 
They went to her head. She became excited, though 
she remained as ever cool. Romance with loud 
puffings brought up the 6.25, or whatever it might 
be, in the glory and power of vented steam, bearing 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


9 


with it a sense of distant cities and a rushing pro¬ 
gress through endless vistas, till, as the monster 
glided to rest, the ends of the world seemed sud¬ 
denly accessible. Then, from many doors, men 
and women poured endlessly for a few brief 
moments, hurrying the mind into speculations of 
“ whence,” and “ whither,” but, in a brief while, 
leaving the long platform empty again, and one 
was free to meditate the twinkling mass of lights 
beckoning further monsters from regions unknown. 
Here one could feel that in the affairs of men there 
was rhythm and variety and power. 

So, at least, felt Barbara. From which it will be 
inferred that Barbara was not quite an ordinary 
girl. A young woman, moved to emotion by the 
aspect of a large locomotive coming to rest in 
Waterloo, and remaining almost unaware of the 
marked attention paid to her good looks by the 
rest of the world, might almost be considered as 
lacking in some of the qualities of her sex. 

There was, indeed, something boyish in her 
appearance and attitude as she stood at ease, but 
poised for action, on the extreme edge of the plat¬ 
form. But this was due less to nature than to 
conscious intention. Her dark brown hair, cut close 
in front, escaped the small hat, and curled back 
from her slender neck as though carved in metal. 
One realised why the Greeks had likened human 
hair to the hyacinth. A loose Burberry hung 
straight from shoulders which were slight and 
deliberately squared. But it was clear that pro¬ 
vidence had made no mistake. There was about 
her a fineness of texture, a perceptible delicacy in 


10 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


the lines of her figure, which was feminine in the 
girl where, in a boy, they would have been effemi¬ 
nate. There was a quick grace in the turn of her 
head, a soft light in her grey eyes, a purity of 
profile in the clear cheek and the straight but not 
aggressive nose, which proclaimed her sex, even 
though it sealed her of the kingdom of Artemis. 
There was just the suggestion of a bow in the small 
mouth, instantly flexible for tenderness or scorn. 
It was not, however, the bow of Cupid, but of the 
chaste huntress. She carried her sex like a rapier, 
with contempt for any whom sex might hamper or 
enslave. 

The train came swiftly round the bend of the 
rails, startling the platform into clamour. Barbara 
stood back and raked the passing coaches with the 
eyes of a dropping hawk, striking her quarry as 
the train slipped past. She walked rapidly back 
towards the front, and her hand was on the door of 
the carriage before Joan was ready to descend. 
She had extricated Joan, identified her luggage, 
impressed a porter, and claimed a taxi, before the 
majority of the passengers had realised that they 
were in London. 

“ Hungry ? ” she asked as the taxi turned to¬ 
wards Waterloo Bridge. 

Barbara was fond of Joan, but her endearments 
usually took a practical turn. 

“ I’m too excited to be hungry,” said Joan, fey 
with the sense of adventure. 

“ I eat the air promise crammed,” chanted 
Barbara. She was a strange girl and had read 
“ Hamlet,” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


11 


44 I am glad you are not hungry,” she added, 
44 because I want you to snatch a sandwich and 
come to the play. We will have supper afterwards.” 

44 But, Barbara,” Joan protested, “ we have got 
to be up very early in the morning. Mother told 
me to go straight to bed.” 

44 Good advice,” said Barbara, “ but you wouldn’t 
sleep, so mine is much more practical.” 

They descended at a small hotel off the Strand, 
where Joan was kindly but peremptorily refreshed 
with hot water, clean towels, an evening blouse, a 
large ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. 

“ And now,” said Barbara, “ we are going to 
lose our hearts at the Novelty Theatre.” 

“ Not Denis Ainley? ” Joan exclaimed. 

“ Our hearts, but not our heads,” said Barbara 
coolly. “ Some persons insist on losing both, 
which is a mistake.” 

It was a bold experiment to plunge an impression¬ 
able girl, arrived from the seclusion of a country 
village, into a modern play aimed, with a seductive 
young actor for its principal missile, full at the 
susceptible hearts of the young and fair. But 
Barbara did not act in pure mischief. It was more 
in the nature of a deliberate ordeal. Henceforth 
she would be responsible for Joan, and Joan was 
about to be plunged into a world where she would 
encounter perils more serious than the factitious 
charms of a successful jeune 'premier. 

A mild and rapid attack of Denis Ainley was 
a possible prophylactic against the serious epidemic 
of young officers and diplomatists to which Joan 
would shortly be exposed. 


B 


12 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Looking at Joan between the acts, a vision of 
shining eyes and flushed cheeks, Barbara decided 
that the experiment was successful. The vac¬ 
cination had taken. 

Two hours later, as they sat at supper in a Soho 
restaurant, Barbara examined her patient more at 
leisure. The symptoms were a slight fever, hurried 
breathing, acceleration of the pulse, and an un¬ 
usual brightness of the eye. 

Barbara, having ordered supper, went straight 
to the point. 

“ Well,” she said, “ what did you think of him ? ” 

“ He is dreadfully ugly,” said Joan deceitfully. 

“ Yes,” said Barbara drily. 

“ And he has a most ungraceful walk,” continued 
Joan. 

“ Yes,” said Barbara. “ It makes him all the 
more fascinating, doesn’t it ? ” 

“ It was a most unusual play,” Joan observed. 

“ Don’t be sly,” said Barbara unexpectedly. 
“You want to rave about him really.” 

“ But it was only a play,” said Joan. “ One 
gets carried away.” 

“ It happens,” said Barbara drily. 

“ Not only in plays,” she added with a discon¬ 
certing abruptness. She paused a moment, and 
Joan wondered what might lie behind this sudden 
observation. 

“ Of course,” said Joan with a sweet certitude 
of youth. “ Life isn’t in the least like that.” 

“ I mean,” she continued, a little uneasy under 
the affectionate mockery in Barbara’s eyes, “ he 
would never have gone to her like that in real life.” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


13 


“ Perhaps you are right,” said Barbara wickedly. 
“ He would have waited to tell her about it in the 
morning. They always do.” 

There was something like the lash of a whip in 
Barbara’s voice, and she fell without pause upon 
the waiter who had just served them with soup. 

“ Take it away please,” she ordered. 

“ Plait-il, Madame ? ” 

“ I asked for hot soup,” she explained. “ This 
was hot the day before yesterday.” 

The waiter was very splendidly dressed, and he 
had brought the soup as if he were officiating at a 
noble ceremony. Joan looked frightened, as though 
she expected an immense rebuke. To her great 
surprise the waiter, after an imperceptible moment 
of hesitation, removed the impressive bowl. 

‘‘Waiters,” Barbara explained when he had 
withdrawn, “ always assume that in a restaurant 
women will stand anything, but you shall never 
have cold soup for supper as long as you have got 
me to look after you.” 

The patron hurried to the table, abject beyond 
the resources of his limited English vocabulary. 
He presented Barbara with the wine list as a peace 
offering. Barbara ordered a bottle of Clicquot, 
and the patron hurried off to the kitchen to scold 
the waiter for his lack of perception. 

“ And now,” said Barbara, “ we shall have hot 
soup and the better portion of a Surrey fowl, and 
the champagne will be just sufficiently iced.” 

“ How did you learn all this? ” Joan asked. 

“ Sweet are the uses of adversity,” quoted 
Barbara. 


14 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


It rang like an incantation to the comic spirit. 
The tone was light, the mood a little remote, the 
air impersonal, but underneath it all a hint of 
sadness. 

The late war had left Barbara an orphan at 
twenty-three. Her father, a successful doctor in 
Cavendish Square, had been unable to save money, 
owing partly to circumstances and partly to tem¬ 
perament, but he had been his daughter’s constant 
companion from the age of nine, when she had lost 
her mother, and in this way he had left her a good 
deal more perhaps than money could buy. At 
twenty-four she had been obliged to seek a living 
in the City, with nothing to her credit beyond her 
courage and a humour instinctive and immediate 
in its response to the necessities of the moment. 
She did not regret the hardship. She had a passion 
for life, but it was a passion almost (esthetic in its 
detachment, more of the mind and the imagination 
than of the pulses. Sensuously she was alive to the 
feeling of others, and gladly aware of it in herself, 
but her will was sovereign, and her spirit, daughter 
of Olympus, played with the lightnings and was 
not consumed. 

From the City she had passed into the service of 
the Government, and for the last three years had 
led a restless international life at councils and 
conferences, a familar figure wherever nations might 
be gathered together to discuss the problems of the 
day. From her father she had inherited a habit of 
wandering, and the gift of tongues. She spoke 
four European languages, including Greek, which 
she inherited from her mother, had a thorough 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


15 


knowledge of delegations and committees, and was 
acquainted with most of the weaknesses of men in 
general, and of great men in particular. 

But the uses of adversity, though sweet to a brave 
spirit, included a knowledge of good and evil. 
Hence, perhaps, the undercurrent of sadness in 
this girl of twenty-seven. A girl so immediately 
attractive, and so fearless of conduct could hardly 
escape attention. She had mismanaged her first 
employer, and had been obliged to dismiss him 
when he became too vividly aware of her charm. 
She had been rather more successful in Whitehall. 
She had acted as secretary for officials of many 
kinds and ages, and not all of them were immune ; 
but she contrived to part friends when they could 
not bear it any longer, and she was always so 
charming about it that they invariably recom¬ 
mended her for promotion. 

She had come to the conclusion that most men 
were weak but not wicked, and that their weakness 
did not greatly matter. There was always the risk 
that they might be impertinent, but if one knew 
how to deal with the situation, they were easily 
made to regret it. 

That Barbara was fully able to deal with any 
such emergencies was revealed on the entry of two 
elegant young men, who proposed to take supper 
at an adjoining table. One of them said something 
to the other, both smiled, and Barbara found that 
she and her companion had suddenly become 
objects of interest and speculation. 

Not by a look or gesture did she indicate that 
she was in the least aware, but there was unmis- 


16 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


takably a change of atmosphere. It was as if she 
had suddenly become insulated. An arctic chill 
seemed to fill the air surrounding her, in which the 
interest of the elegant young men perished im¬ 
mediately of inanition. The more sensitive of them 
almost perceptibly shivered. 

Joan was sweetly unaware of this play of human 
forces in her immediate neighbourhood, but, un¬ 
accustomed to observation, she instinctively fid¬ 
geted. She was dreadfully conscious of the young 
men whom Barbara had not apparently seen, and 
her fingers mechanically re-arranged the blouse on 
her shoulders. For the first time she wondered 
whether it was altogether right to be taking supper 
in Soho at midnight without a chaperon. 

The soup returned with a temperature beyond 
criticism. 

“ Waiter,” Barbara began- 

Joan hoped that nothing further was wrong. 
She was beginning to be hungry. 

“ Madame? ” said the waiter. 

“ There is a slight draught from the window.” 

“ But that is impossible,” said the waiter 
deferentially. “ The curtains move not at all.” 

“ Perhaps it is my imagination,” said Barbara 
sweetly, “ but would it be possible to have a 
screen ? ” 

“ Certainly, Madame.” 

The waiter brought the screen. Not by so much 
as a glance had Barbara indicated that the screen 
might be of any use save as a shield against a draught 
that did not exist. But the waiter arranged it 
with consummate tact, and Barbara and Joan were 



LOOKING AFTER JOAN 17 

able to continue their supper in a privacy entirely 
feminine. 

§ 3 

On the evening of the last night which Joan had 
spent in Mead well, Nicholas Fayle, a bachelor of 
means and no permanent employment, received a 
telegram. Nicholas lived in a small flat in Lincoln 
Square, and the telegram was brought to him in his 
library. He read it impatiently, and looked at his 
housekeeper with a vexed expression. 

44 Martha,” he complained, 44 this is very tire¬ 
some.” 

44 The Government again, I’ll be bound,” said 
Martha. 

44 The Government,” said Nicholas, 44 is always 
trying to improve the European situation.” 

44 There is perhaps an answer,” Martha suggested. 

Nicholas wrote something on a form and handed 
it to his housekeeper. 

44 This,” he said, 44 means that we must pack at 
once for Paris and beyond.” 

44 The usual luggage? ” Martha asked. 

44 Rather more than usual. Put in all the con¬ 
ference suits, and do not forget the accessories. 
Last time you omitted to pack my Order of the 
British Empire, and I had to borrow my steno¬ 
grapher’s. Such incidents, Martha, are subversive 
of discipline in the Civil Service.” 

Martha withdrew, leaving Nicholas to a rueful 
contemplation of his comfortable room, and the 
elaborate preparations he had made for at least 
three months of uninterrupted private work. 


18 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Nicholas had two absorbing affections. One was 
statistics. The other was English poetry. They 
ministered equally to his romantic temperament. 
Nicholas, by means of his statistics, was enabled 
sitting quietly in his library to survey all the king¬ 
doms of the world, to behold a pageant of activity, 
manifold, complex, astounding in its perpetual 
energy and variety. Indices, co-efficients, scales, 
schedules and graphs, as manipulated by Nicholas, 
had a semblance of the black art. He dealt with 
them as a master, knowing that anything might 
thereby be established, refuted, affirmed, confounded 
or destroyed. Such a gift was of some value to 
public men of the day. To the lie constitutional 
and the lie direct there has recently been added 
the lie by statistics, which has indeed become 
the prince of lies, comprehending and justifying 
all the others. Empires were being refashioned 
under its authority, tyrannies imposed, wars sanc¬ 
tified, churches destroyed, nations liberated or 
enslaved. 

Nicholas, like the medieval alchemist, practised 
largely for fun. Cheerfully he put the products of 
his art at the disposal of any who might appeal to 
him for its exercise. He was one of that strange 
company of unattached officials, invariably sum¬ 
moned by telegram to the hotels and palaces of 
Europe, wherever the leaders of the world might be 
gathered together to settle the affairs of mankind. 

This was a period when, after the war, the 
European administrations still included the mob¬ 
ilised skill and erudition of the universities and 
learned professions. Professors of military history, 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


19 


economists, authorities upon languages, races and 
religions might still be seen at the elbows of the 
Cabinet, helping to make or mar the settlement of 
Europe. Of this odd company Nicholas was no 
mean member. 

It must not be inferred that he was unscrup¬ 
ulous. He was like the lawyer who places his 
technical skill indifferently at the disposal of his 
clients, and like the lawyer he could plead the 
benefit of a sacred extenuation : they know not 
what they do. 

He had never realised what lay behind his figures. 
Migration, massacre, famine, death and disease 
stared from his charts neatly plotted upon squared 
paper, but Nicholas had never seen any of these 
things. He saw men in millions, which is only 
another way of saying that he did not see them. 

There was nothing at all official in the appear¬ 
ance of Nicholas Fayle. His brown hair curled 
slightly back from a broad brow. His eyes had 
an inward look. They were deep and dark. His 
prevalent expression was serious, lightened by the 
play of a somewhat distant humour, but relieved 
still more, when his attention was engaged, by an 
ingenuous interest and curiosity, such as one sees 
on the faces of intelligent children confronted with 
something new. He was of medium height, had a 
fine strong nose, and a full mouth. 

Recently he had specialised in the statistics of 
ethnology. He could tell you about the Tosks 
and the Ghegs in Albania, and how many Ruthen- 
ians lived in the Carpathians. Periodically he was 
summoned from his charts and his files to the green- 


20 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


baize tables of the new diplomacy to exhibit his 
graphs, to assist in the dismemberment of old 
kingdoms and the creation of new ones. 

Nicholas the statistician was not well known to 
the public. He was better known to fame by 
virtue of his second enthusaism. 

Most people have seen, or perhaps they have 
even read, the anthologies of Nicholas Fayle. This 
evening, as he sat alone in his library after the 
receipt of the telegram, he could not help feeling a 
little vexed. It was unfortunate that a summons 
should come at this particular moment. He was 
on the point of assembling an anthology which 
was to be more complete, and certainly more popu¬ 
lar in its appeal, than any he had yet achieved— 
nothing less than an anthology of the English love 
poetry of the ages. For several weeks he had 
pastured happily among his books, passing in 
review all that had been sung in praise and acknow¬ 
ledgment of the power and passion of love for more 
than twenty generations. This anthology was to 
be his masterpiece. For years he had meditated 
the material. He ranged from the note of distant 
chivalry to ecstasies vibrant and fulfilled. There 
was no phase of the great passion which was not 
included, and whose music his inward ear had 
failed to recognise and to remember. He had a 
sensibility which responded at once to an imagina¬ 
tive stimulus. Browning or Lovelace, it was all one. 
He was there to meet them in fancy at the first 
hint of an incantation. His selection would be 
both choice and comprehensive, and his essay in 
discrimination would be a marvel of sympathy and 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


21 


understanding. There was but one small circum¬ 
stance which might to the vulgar have seemed to 
militate against his sure success; Nicholas had 
never been in love. 

But did it greatly matter ? Was it not perhaps 
an advantage ? Was not Nicholas, who had never 
had a love affair of his own, all the more likely to 
understand and sympathise with the thousand poets 
who had lived and loved before ? Might it not be 
argued that Nicholas, having forborne to spend his 
heart upon a heroine of flesh and blood, had all the 
more passion at command with which to feel for 
Juliet or Pompilia ? 

Who shall say that Nicholas, turning over the 
leaves of his anthology, as yet only existing in the 
fine caligraphy of one who loved the act of writing 
for its own sake, had not chosen the wiser part ? 
He had for his delight the love fair women had 
inspired in sonnet and song for over six hundred 
years. Was it credible that there existed beyond 
the walls of his library anything that could reason¬ 
ably be offered in compensation ? His manuscript 
fell open at a title : 

SUMMUM BONUM 

All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one 
bee ; 

All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of 
one gem ; 

In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea ; 

Breath and bloom, shade and shine,—wonder, wealth, 
and—how far above them— 

Truth, that’s brighter than gem, 

Trust, that’s purer than pearl,— 

Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe—all were for me 

In the kiss of one girl. 


22 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


He still remembered the evening he had copied 
it into his book with a hand that had trembled 
slightly under the lyric impulse of the master. 
Could anything in the world compare ? Nicholas 
had as yet no occasion to think so. Summum 
Bonum: Nicholas had found it always in his 
library. 

He sat late that night while Martha came and 
went seeking instructions. 

On one occasion she surprised him chanting 
strange music. 

Spin, daughter Mary, spin, 

Twirl your wheel with silver din ; 

Spin, daughter Mary, spin. 

Spin a tress for Viola. 

Weave, hands angelical, 

Weave a woof of flesh to pall— 

Weave, hands angelical— 

Flesh to pall our Viola. 

Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes. 
Wood-browned pools of Paradise— 

Young Jesus, for the eyes. 

For the eyes of Viola. 

Breathe, Lord Paraclete, 

To a bubbled crystal meet— 

Breathe, Lord Paraclete— 

Crystal soul for Viola. 

“ The dear lamb,” was Martha’s comment, 
unuttered but to be read in her wise old eyes. 

At first she had been a little scandalised by her 
master’s latest activity, the evidence of which had 
for weeks remained carelessly piled upon his desk, 
and open to observation. It was alatming to 



LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


23 


discover that every book fell open at songs of love, 
often characterised by an ardour and particularity 
which was embarrassing. She had suspected at 
first that there might be an actual woman in the 
case, and that shortly she would be receiving her 
dismissal or a mistress. But Nicholas, to her 
great comfort, continued to sit in his library and to 
eat his meals, till at last Martha had come to classify 
his close pursuit of Eros through the printed page 
as another of his oddities. 

She was accustomed to such conclusions. At 
an early stage of her decent career in his service she 
had found him one day in his library joyful as a 
schoolboy over an enormous chart on which was 
plotted a strange red curve which, according to 
explanatory notes, exhibited graphically the history 
for fifty years of interracial massacre in Asia Minor. 
He was expounding the matter to a colleague. 

“ I find, my dear fellow, that they are periodic,” 
he had cried triumphantly. “If the figures are 
correct there fcannot fail to be another within the 
next six months.” 

“ And him that wouldn’t hurt a fly,” as Martha 
had said afterwards in the kitchen. 

Martha had declared herself much to the same 
effect in reference to her master’s pilgrimage among 
the unruly generations of men who had proclaimed 
all for love and the world well lost. 

“ There is nothing wrong with the master,” she 
had confidently declared. “You may take it from 
me that he has simply not got it in him ; anyway 
nothing of that sort or kind.” 


CHAPTER II 


§ 1 


HIS is not the story of the diplomatic crisis 



of 19—. It is the story of Nicholas and 


JL Barbara and Joan, and of one other person 
who will in due course be presented. Suffice it that 
another peace was to be concluded, and that certain 
delegates were meeting for the purpose in Paris at 
the Palais du Petit Luxembourg. 

To Nicholas, who was more accustomed to the 
dull magnificence of the great hotels of the Etoile, 
the Luxembourg was a relaxation. The fruit trees 
in the garden of the President of the Senat were in 
blossom. The spring sun warmed the terraces and 
statues, and sparkled through the fountain. There 
were children playing with boats, students playing 
with books, young men and women playing with 
love—all quite happily remote from questions of 
high policy. And Paris was just beyond the thresh- 
hold—not the Paris where one is busy or splendid 
or riotous, but where one can be idle in little streets, 
with a glass of coffee and a newspaper, taking 
the delicate air and becoming momentarily more 
intelligent, the Paris of small bookshops and tiny 
cafes, where life and art and learning jostle in a 
spirited confusion, with the Senat to lend it 

24 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


25 


dignity, the Sorbonne to rebuke its levity, and the 
Observatoire to point it to the stars. 

Anyone less accustomed than Nicholas to the 
domestic interiors of an international conference 
might have found his present quarters incongruous. 
But Nicholas had worked in many palaces. In 
Rome he had worked in the villa of a cardinal, 
among tapestries and statues, spreading his charts 
where young stenographers, to the clicking of type¬ 
writers, might be seen looking sidelong at Artemis 
or Athene, wondering, perhaps, how much she 
measured round the waist. He had seen too often 
the equipment and litter of the modern interna¬ 
tional bureaucracy defiling the apartments of 
princes to find it strange. 

In the Palais du Petit Luxembourg there is a 
small room dedicated to Napoleon. It is in white 
and gold, and that peculiar harsh and inescapable 
red in which upholsterers invariably express the 
courtly idea. Above Nicholas, as he sat before a 
table of white marble and alabaster, towered a 
gigantic tablet commemorating one of the Emperor’s 
most famous campaigns, with bitter references to 
England, tyrant of the seas, and paymaster of 
continental mercenaries. A satirical eye dropping 
from the tablet must fall with some amusement 
upon Nicholas. He was gently absorbed in 
plotting a graph which was to indicate how a mean 
frontier might be determined for a distant kingdom, 
having regard to race and the economic factor. 

He rose and opened a door. There was a crackle 
of typewriters, and the cheerful noise of many voices. 
Nicholas looked upon a familar scene. There was 


26 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


even the inevitable nude in white marble, deep to 
the waist in documents piled at her feet. A litter of 
discarded paper lay on the rich carpet, thick as 
shavings in a carpenter’s shop, and at the long 
trestle tables specially imported for the purpose, 
some twenty typists, perched on golden and bro¬ 
caded chairs, presented a spectacle as inspiring to 
the trained official eye as a battery going into action. 

Nicholas from the door could not refrain from a 
rapid statistical calculation, from which in ten 
seconds he deduced that at the present rate of 
progress it would take six weeks to type the “ Ency¬ 
clopedia Britannica,” an impressive witness to the 
height of the negotiations then in progress. 

The apparition of Nicholas was duly observed by 
eyes sufficiently practised to continue at a speed of 
sixty words a minute without exclusive attention 
to the keyboard. 

One pair of eyes was turned upon him point 
blank, indicating that their owner was either more 
curious or less practised than the others, or perhaps 
it was that for the moment she had nothing im¬ 
portant to do. 

Nicholas would not ordinarily have noticed the 
frank inspection to which he was subjected, but he 
was looking for someone to attend to his require¬ 
ments, and he naturally paused beside the chair of 
the only girl who seemed disposed to recognise his 
existence. He thus found himself committed to a 
mutual stare from which it was difficult to emerge 
with credit. He had never seen such unusual eyes, 
and yet they reminded him of something which for 
the moment he could not place. Nicholas had no 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


27 


very clear idea of the appearance he himself pre¬ 
sented to the world, and for the moment he failed 
to recognise that the something vaguely familiar 
in the eyes of Joan was something which had 
confronted him for over thirty years from the 
looking-glass whenever he made use of it. 

Joan and Nicholas, looking at one another for the 
first time, both had the grave and curious aspect 
of two children meeting at a party. 

“ Can you tell me, please, “ said Nicholas, “ where 
I am likely to find Miss Miers.” 

“ I will show you,” said Joan. 

She rose, and Nicholas followed her down the long 
room, happily unconscious of the malicious interest 
of its occupants. In such assemblies a scandal may 
be built on even less foundation than an exchange 
of eyes, and a suspicious promptitude in the render¬ 
ing of small services. 

Nicholas followed Joan into another and smaller 
apartment of the palace, where Barbara, in the seat 
of organisation, was installed in front of a small 
table, Nicholas, walking behind his conductor, 
felt as though a lamp had suddenly gone out. The 
feeling passed as Joan turned to indicate that Miss 
Miers was waiting to receive him. Certainly his 
guide had the most illuminating eyes. 

“ Well, Mr. Fayle, what can I do for you ? ” 

“ Can you spare me anybody ? ” he asked. 

“You have found her already,” said Barbara, 
glancing towards Joan. 

“ This young lady ? ” Nicholas helpfully inquired. 

“ Miss Weaver,” said Barbara. 

“ This,” she continued to Joan, “ is Mr. Fayle. 
c 


28 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


It is understood that he has first call on you during 
the conference.” 

44 Capital,” said Nicholas. 

It became evident that they were dismissed, and 
Nicholas led the way. 

During the rest of the morning, plotting graphs 
upon the marble table of the Napoleon room, Joan 
was overwhelmed with a sense of initiation. This 
was history in the making. She was helping to 
frame the destinies of Europe. Every now and 
then Nicholas would instruct or explain in terms 
that gave to her work an importance almost 
greater than she could bear. 

“ This,” he would say, “ is demographical. The 
Croats will be pleased, but the Marquis will be 
furious.” 

“ What are Croats,” Joan wanted to ask, “ and 
who is the Marquis ? ” 

Every now and then Nicholas would bend over 
to inspect the result of her application to the matter 
in hand. 

44 Capital,” he would say. 

This was for Joan the culmination of a series of 
experiences and sensations which had passed too 
swiftly to be thoroughly realised. Her mind, when 
she had time to collect it, was like a futurist design, 
in which bits of Victoria Station got mixed up 
with the cabin she had shared with Barbara on the 
boat and the dove - coloured upholstery of the 
Chemin-de-fer du Nord. At one end was London, 
with Denis Ainley smiling upon her, by this time a 
little dimly, from the footlights of a pleasant 
theatre, and at the other end was Paris, where 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 29 

everyone you met was a foreigner and therefore 
interesting. 

Joan hesitated every five minutes between the 
feeling that she had suddenly become ten years 
older than Meadwell and the conviction that she 
was ten years younger than Waterloo. She had, in 
fact, completely lost her bearings in time and space. 
Hitherto she had lived in definite relation to certain 
people and to certain ideas, but for the moment 
she was detached from everything familiar and 
was almost uncertain as to her precise identity. 
It was as though she had taken a sudden plunge into 
the fourth dimension. She would hardly have been 
surprised to discover that Paris was really yesterday 
and that London was the middle of next week. 

Nicholas Fayle suddenly suggested lunch. He 
was lunching, it seemed, with Barbara, who was an 
old friend and colleague, and it was natural that 
Joan also should be invited. 

They lunched in the Quartier, and it was a great 
success. It is socially obvious that when three 
people meet between whom there is a predisposi¬ 
tion to be friendly, and when two of the three are 
on the footing of Christian names it is almost 
invidious to insist upon too rigid a formality in 
respect of the third. Barbara, addressing Mr. Fayle, 
referred continually to Joan, and Joan referred 
naturally to Barbara. Mr. Fayle was shortly 
addressing Miss Miers, whom he had known officially 
for several years, as Barbara, and by that time it 
had become obvious that Joan could not be left in 
the cold. 

All this might have happened in any case, but it 


30 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


would not have happened so quickly if Barbara 
had not previously determined that it was the 
best possible solution of a problem that was vexing 
her. Barbara, in fact, had already come to the 
conclusion that she had somehow to provide for 
Joan. The conference was likely to last for some 
time, and Joan was clearly unfitted to roam at 
liberty in Paris. It might be said that Joan was a 
little on Barbara’s conscience. Had she realised 
that Joan was so fatally attractive and so danger¬ 
ously unaware of it, she would have hesitated to 
bring her without more adequate preparation into 
an environment which called for, at any rate, some 
small knowledge of oneself and a touch of that 
instinctive wariness which was somehow foreign to 
Joan’s character and temperament. 

There were times when she would not be able to 
give Joan all the attention necessary. She had other 
work to do. Moreover, as chief of the staff, with a 
moral prefecture to sustain, she must not too 
obviously expose herself to the charge of cherishing 
a favourite. In these circumstances, Nicholas 
might be regarded as sent from heaven. With 
Nicholas Joan would be as secure as at Meadwell. 
They were so obviously a pair. Any other man 
might have found her something of a problem, for 
Joan, throwing herself at the world, had so easily 
the air of throwing herself at anyone who might be 
acting for the moment as its showman. Nicholas, 
however, could make no such mistake, not because 
he was wiser than other men, but because for him 
the problem did not exist. He would take her 
simplicity for granted. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


31 


So Barbara smiled upon their nascent friendship, 
easing her conscience with a prompt conviction 
that all was happening for the best. 

§ 2 

Barbara and Joan occupied adjoining rooms in a 
hotel near the Luxembourg. They were pleasant 
rooms, looking down upon a narrow street, which 
began somewhere in the sixteenth century (not far 
from the river) and ran with just a suggestion of 
the romantic squalor and cunning of old Paris 
towards the leafy idleness of the Quartier. 

There was a communicating door between the 
rooms. It was open, and through it the occupants 
were carrying on a lively conversation. It was an 
evening some days later than the first meeting of 
Joan and Nicholas. 

The rooms were cheerfully papered with roses 
climbing in and out of a green lattice work. The 
furniture was dark mahogany, and a soft green 
carpet covered the floor. On the beds were eider¬ 
downs of a similar green. The curtains were like¬ 
wise, and the wood was white. It was a simple 
scheme, but entering after a stroll in the Luxem¬ 
bourg gardens, or in the Avenue de l’Observatoire, 
or among the kiosks and the cafes of the Quartier, 
one perceived that the proprietor was justified. 
He struck a note of innocence and gaiety, the 
prettiest note of that delightful region on a sunny 
morning in early Spring, when Paris ceases to be 
smart and wicked, and seems a city specially 
designed for children and philosophers, 


32 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Barbara’s instinct for the right effect had 
prompted her in a fit of the romps to purchase two 
bright balloons in blue from the old woman who on 
fine days invariably stood under the railings of the 
garden. At the present moment they soared to the 
ceiling, tethered one each side to the foot of Joan’s 
bed, waving softly in the air, still warm, which en¬ 
tered from the window. The room was bright with 
noises of the town, strident omnibuses swerving dan¬ 
gerously into the narrow street, decrepit taxis and 
the lively progress of interminable conversations. 

Barbara appeared in the doorway, and came 
forward to inspect her friend. 

“ You’ll do,” she said after a moment’s appre¬ 
ciation. 

“ Do you really think so,” Joan seriously inquired. 
“ I mean,” she added, “ do you think I shall do for 
Mr. Fayle ? ” 

“ I think it is very likely,” said Barbara drily. 

“ Oh,” said Joan, “ I did not mean it in that 
sense.” 

“ I know you didn’t, dearest,” said Barbara, 
“ But nobody else would believe you—except per¬ 
haps Nicholas himself,” she added. 

“ Why do you think he asked me to dine with 
him to-night ? ” asked Joan, who was now arranging 
a wrap about her shoulders. 

“ Very odd, wasn’t it,” said Barbara. 

“ I suppose,” said Joan turning from the looking- 
glass, “ that it is quite all right—I mean my dining 
with Mr. Fayle. Come to think of it, he is almost 
a stranger, though we do seem to be calling him 
Nicholas,” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


33 


“It is quite all right — with Nicholas,” said 
Barbara. 

“ But to-morrow,” said Joan, “ it may be some¬ 
body else.” 

That,” said Barbara, looking into the mirror 
in which Joan’s prettiness was reflected, “ is 
extremely probable. We will deal with the crisis 
when it comes.” 

“ Then it isn’t always right,” said Joan quickly. 
“ How is one to know ? ” 

“ That is just the difficulty,” sighed Barbara. 
“ When one knows who it should be, it doesn’t 
matter who it is. By that time one is a match for 
everybody.” 

Joan, now sitting on the bed, looked very gravely 
at Barbara. Even she had been unable to miss 
altogether the dry air of disillusion that always 
surrounded Barbara when she referred to men. 

“ I suppose you know an awful lot about them,” 
said Joan. “ Men, I mean.” 

“ I have met a few,” said Barbara. 

“ Bad ones,” Joan asked, “ or good ones ? ” 

“ It isn’t quite as easy as that,” said Barbara. 

“ I wish you wouldn’t be so mysterious,” said 
Joan ; “ you could tell me heaps if you only would.” 

44 Telling is no use,” said Barbara. “ People 
always insist on learning for themselves. If 
I talked to you about men till midnight, you 
would insist on starting off to-morrow with a blank 
sheet, making the same old mistakes and learning 
the same old things all over again.” 

“At any rate,” said Joan, “ you can tell me about 
Mr, Fayle,” 


34 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“You would much rather find it out for yourself,” 
said Barbara. 

Joan sighed. 

“ I have got a great deal to learn,” she remarked. 

“ Yes,” said Barbara, “ so has Nicholas.” 

§ 3 

Five minutes later Nicholas and Joan were seated 
before the hotel in a taxi, and Barbara was waving 
them a happy farewell from the window. 

They were to dine, it seemed, at Armenonville. 

Barbara was dedicated to a long evening’s 
work at the Luxembourg. Now and then, as the 
time slipped away, she looked up from her papers 
and smiled at the thought of Nicholas and Joan 
together in the Bois: a fairy story perhaps with 
an old title but a new significance. 

It was the hour of the aperitif, which belongs to 
Paris alone. To each city of the world is allowed 
its own peculiar moment. London has its hour of 
tea cup and saucer, an hour with which it seems 
impossible in London to dispense, the peculiar joy 
of which no foreigner has ever known. But Paris, 
which at teatime is a foolish travesty, is herself 
again at the hour of the aperitif. Man is no longer 
a slave, but a social creature, with leisure for the 
newspaper and human discourse, with time in 
which to realise that life is fortunate and gracious, 
a state of well-being which can be enjoyed for its 
own sake. The pavements are filled with happy 
people, who at small tables refresh themselves 
according to fancy. The hour is coloured with 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


35 


pleasant anticipation, home, or the theatre, or an 
intimate meeting. Above all, there is the real 
secret of the hour, the circumstances that gives 
to it its peculiar atmosphere. It is an hour sus¬ 
pended between the day’s work and the evening’s 
play, transitory and therefore precious, alive with 
anticipation, or at all events blessed with relief, 
an hour rescued from the tyranny of time, when 
the clocks of the city stand still and allow the mind 
to escape, unfettered and undiminished. 

Joan was unusually sensitive to the spirit of the 
hour as she drove with Nicholas towards the Bois. 
She was herself at that moment suspended between 
two worlds—a dizzy suspension, for the world 
behind her was new, and the world in front of her 
was unknown. Her experiences that afternoon 
had culminated in an introduction to the presence 
chamber of conference, an experience which for one 
who had read remotely of prime ministers and 
ambassadors as being infinitely important and 
splendid, and only to be seen by ordinary folk at 
a great distance, had been an almost incredible 
adventure. 

Nicholas, previously summoned to the table, had 
sent a messenger bidding her enter with the charts 
which they had prepared in the morning. She 
could still feel every step of that amazing progress— 
the long ante-chamber crowded with waiting secre¬ 
taries and journalists, the ultimate corridor where 
anxious diplomatists of varied complexions awaited 
the result of the discussion, a pause at the door 
where she had been instructed to pronounce the 
name of Mr. Fayle of the British delegation, and, 


36 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


finally, her entry into the presence chamber itself, 
where, sacredly remote at the further end, the 
statesmen sat at a large table, one of them talking, 
some of them listening, some of them reading 
papers or writing letters, and very few of them 
apparently taking any notice at all of what was 
going on. 

During her long progress to the table, she had 
half expected to be denounced for an impertinent 
intrusion, but nobody noticed her, not even 
Nicholas. He was sitting just behind the British 
representative, who, with his chair tilted back, was 
listening to Nicholas attentively, and Nicholas 
merely motioned her to stand aside a moment in 
case the chart should be required. 

For some minutes she had remained listening, first 
to one and then to another, trying to identify the 
great ones from a recollection of their pictures in 
the press. She wondered which was the Marquis, 
and which, if any, were the Croats, and whether 
they were pleased. They were all talking about 
something called an ethnical frontier—or was it 
ethical? 

Then suddenly she realised that Nicholas was 
talking and that all the statemen were listening to 
his words. Some of them left off reading and writ¬ 
ing, and looked at him over spectacles, or noted as 
he made some point. One of them dropped an eye¬ 
glass from his eye which, being a sanguine man, 
he hoped was a sign of his intelligent interest 
in the proceedings. 

Joan was instinctively sure that this must be the 
Marquis, 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


37 


Finally, Nicholas, illustrating his remarks with 
frequent reference to a large white map that lay 
just in front of the British representative, had 
picked up a blue pencil from the table, and had 
drawn a firm but devious line from point to point. 

He then sat down, and the British representative 
handed the map across the table to a cluster of 
small dark men, who were talking in a strange 
tongue among themselves. One of them, who 
seemed to be their leader, then began to make a 
long speech in French, and most of the statesmen, as 
though a crisis had been survived, resumed their 
various attitudes of inattention. 

She had departed reluctantly, with the sort of 
feeling she had often experienced in the long in¬ 
tervals of a weekly serial. There was so much she 
would like to have known. She would never really 
discover who was the Marquis or whether she had 
seen the Croats. 

Life now seemed capable of anything. There 
were no limits to its possibilities. It might at 
any moment call upon her to do extraordinary 
things, and to feel unprecedented emotions. 
Nothing like a landmark anywhere remained. All 
her standards of perception and feeling had been 
removed. She floated in an atmosphere of expecta¬ 
tion and wonder of what would happen next. She 
could do no more than catch at the moments as 
they flew, with a feeling that she must be missing 
some of them as they sped beyond her into the 
past. Some day perhaps she would have time to 
collect her thoughts and impressions. Meanwhile, 
she sat well forward in the taxi, her eyes flitting 


38 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


from the crowded cafes to the busy street, from 
buildings luminous with evening light to the young 
green of the trees in the boulevards, from the river 
(when it came), reflecting the long line of the Louvre, 
to the quays where people idled over boxes of old 
or tattered books. Soon, with a sensation of pride 
and opulence, she was swept from the Place de la 
Concorde, up the Elysees to where Napoleon, 
insolent as ever, had erected his egregious arch, 
inflicting scorn upon the conquered nations, and a 
permanent disfigurement upon his capital city. 

All too soon the glory of the Etoile was left be¬ 
hind. She was being carried to the gates of Paris, 
to be in a few moments deliciously embowered in 
the sylvan intricacies of the Bois, a woodland with 
fairy coaches by Mercedes, a pastoral according to 
Poiret. 

Twilight was falling as they left the city, and 
from the wide avenue of the Bois they ran into a 
velvet gloom, reaching at last, quite unexpectedly, 
a restaurant blazing with lights and bright with 
every extravagance invented by a period which 
does not believe in hiding its riches under a bushel. 

The dark and silent expanse of wood in which it 
stood gave to this glittering palace an air of sorcery. 
One might reasonably expect it to vanish suddenly 
at the stroke of a genie, leaving its occupants roof¬ 
less and derelict under the shade of melancholy 
boughs. 

Nicholas was well known at this particular 
resort. He liked to dine where he could quietly 
observe a brilliant company. He would watch 
without envy, without any wish to share or even 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


39 


to understand the pleasures of the worldly. He 
enjoyed like a child the lights, the colours, the 
murmur of voices, the hint now and then of a story, 
caught from phrases heh eard. He liked, especially, 
to come upon such a scene as this, fresh from the 
serenity of the Bois, and usually he would walk 
home, cooling his cheeks in the air, and breathing 
the scents of the undergrowth. On such occasions 
he would perhaps remember some incident of the 
evening, or more often yield vaguely to the excite¬ 
ment of the life surrounding him. He did not 
resent the fact that he had no personal part in it. 
He felt his temporary exclusion, if at all, as matter 
for a pleasant sadness which, wilfully fostered, 
might send him to his poets for consolation ; and 
such moments were invariably lightened by a 
secret assurance that, as dreaming philosopher, he 
had perhaps chosen the better part. 

That Nicholas, who sat at the elbows of the great 
in council, should also be a familiar figure in this 
house of splendid frivolity impressed Joan with a 
lively sense of his versatility, and immensely added 
to her conviction that she was magically tended. 
A waiter answering the friendly greeting of Nicholas 
with a smile, led them to a corner whence they 
commanded the whole room. 

“ This is my special table,” said Nicholas as 
they sat down. “ I like to look on at things,” he 
explained. 

During the next few minutes Nicholas was 
recommending dishes and settling the wine. Not 
till the waiter had withdrawn did they realise that 
they were committed beyond remedy to a sociable 


40 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


encounter which would last for the rest of the 
evening. Nicholas rather wondered how it had 
happened. How had he contrived to be sitting 
opposite this unfamiliar girl ? He did not think of 
giving any of the credit to Barbara. Joan felt that 
the evening was going to be very complicated, and 
that she was most inadequately prepared. She 
realised that she was entirely unlike any of the 
women she saw about her. There was one quality 
in particular she lacked. A certain hard insolence 
of mien that comes of habitually wearing a hundred 
guineas, and of being a source of gratifying expense 
to one’s companion. Joan decided that she did 
not like these women. They had her at a dis¬ 
advantage. They obviously belonged to the glitter¬ 
ing scene, whereas she, quite as obviously, did not 
belong. It was splendid though alarming to be 
there, but she knew that she was only there for fun. 
She was, in fact, a spectator. 

Nicholas also had said that. He liked to look on 
at things. She discovered all at once that, though 
familiarly at home and sitting at his special table, 
he was, like herself—how should she put it ?—well, 
he was different. For confirmation she looked at 
the other men. They all, old, young or middle-aged, 
had something which Nicholas lacked. It was not 
exactly assurance, for Nicholas was himself assured. 
It was not any definable quality of will or mind or 
character. He was clearly the equal of any of them. 
It was not the capacity to command attention or 
respect. Neverless, Nicholas seemed somehow a 
child in their company. He had about him an air 
which in that assembly was incongruous. If this 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


41 


was the world that surrounded her, then Nicholas 
clearly was not a man of the world, and even as 
Joan instinctively realised the difference, she as 
instinctively liked him the better for it. 

“ Amusing, isn’t it ? ” 

Nicholas was talking to her. 

“ I can’t quite take it in,” said Joan, “ not all 
at once.” 

“ Plenty of time for that,” said Nicholas. 

He looked closely at his companion for the first 
time. Hitherto he had been aware of her as a 
girl with eyes elfinly at issue with the rest of her, 
confided to his special charge by Barbara with 
an inescapable persistence and a sense almost of 
fatality. As he looked at her now, that sense of 
fatality increased. Something lit in him. He was 
aware of her as he had never before been aware of 
anyone. She sat solemn and a little pale with 
excitement, with a suspicion of disorder from her 
rapid drive. He saw her for a moment in detail, 
the pale grey dress, the silk wrap about her shoulders, 
the red rose which Barbara had pinned at her 
breast, where it cast a tiny glow, imperceptible 
except to the eye of a painter, upon the hollow 
where it rested. Then he lost all sense of detail in a 
sudden confusion. He looked away from her with 
an effort, curiously shaken. 

Nicholas had flashes of perception that revealed 
intuitively some scene or person, not piecemeal, or 
in any particular place or time, but completely, 
everywhere, and for ever. The sensitive imagina¬ 
tion of the recluse, quickened by contact with 
the crowd, had at such moments what almost 


42 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


amounted to a gift of divination, and to-night there 
was the novel inspiration of a heart and senses 
touched to purposes unforeseen. Such was his 
perception of Joan in that moment. He knew all 
that Joan was and might be, and nothing would 
ever obscure or detract from that knowledge. He 
was aware of her youth, and all that would unfold 
from her youth. He was conscious also of the life 
that pressed about her, of the knowledge that 
would brighten or soil a curiosity sensitive to meet 
it. Above all, he was conscious of the amazing 
novelty that the world contained for her, of the 
risks and the possibilities which it held; and, 
unwittingly, he devoted himself from that moment 
to her comfort and protection, a dedication com¬ 
plete and never to be recalled. 

Joan had suffered no such disturbance. She had 
merely reinforced a previous impression that he 
was obviously the best friend she could have found. 
Of course, it was Barbara’s doing. Barbara wanted 
them to be better acquainted, and Barbara must 
not be disappointed. But how was she to secure 
the regard of a man who knew so much that had 
hitherto lain beyond her horizon ? 

She spoke suddenly on an impulse, realising with 
horror that it sounded like an appeal. 

“ Barbara wants us to be friends,” she said. 

“ Well,” said Nicholas kindly, “ why not ? ” 

cc I don’t mean-” Joan began, and stopped in 

some confusion. 

She meant to say that she did not mean to be 
forward, but the remark seemed somehow of a 
kind to make matters worse, so she suppressed it. 



LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


43 


“ Suppose we begin,” said Nicholas. 

Joan took a spoon and began the soup. 

“ Good idea,” said Nicholas, also taking a spoon, 
“ but that was not my meaning. I meant, suppose 
we begin to be friends.” 

“ How does one begin,” asked Joan. 

“ Well, I should like to know something about you.” 

“ There isn’t anything,” said Joan. 

“ Come,” said Nicholas. “ To start with, you 
must have been born somewhere.” 

“ Mead well,” said Joan. 

“But that’s very interesting,” protested Nicholas. 
“ I was born in Sussex too at Eridge, on the other 
side of the Forest.” 

“ Mead well is right out of the world,” said Joan. 
“ Our letter box is still marked V.R., and it hasn’t 
been painted since I was born. I can remember it 
getting paler and paler for years and years.” 

“ Have you always lived at Mead well ? ’ 

“ Always, till father died. That was two years 
ago.” 

Nicholas could never say anything when he heard 
of a father or mother or a wife or a husband having 
recently died. He was too genuinely sympathetic 
to be content with the ordinary conventional 
phrases, and too deeply preoccupied with wondering 
about the special details and implications of the 
particular case. 

“You must miss your father very much,” he 
said at last. 

“ It has made a great difference,” said Joan, 
“You see, I had always lived at home. After 
father died I had to find something to do.” 


D 


44 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ And Barbara helped ? ” 

“ How do you know that ? ” 

“ She always helps. And then I suppose you 
went to London,” Nicholas continued. 

“ I went up to London for my classes. I stayed 
with my aunt who lives in Highgate.” 

“ Then you know London ? ” 

“ Some parts of it,” said Joan. “ There are some 
very pretty walks round Highgate.” 

“ So I have heard,” said Nicholas gravely. “ I 
have been told there is rather a good pond.” 

“ Three,” said Joan. 

The waiter was showing Nicholas a dish on which 
were three attractive fish lying side by side, de¬ 
corated with slices of lemon and tiny mushrooms. 
Nicholas nodded his head, and the waiter removed 
the dish to a small table to be served, where 
another waiter was warming plates over a burner. 
A third waiter was pouring out white wine, while 
the maitre d’hotel was supervising all these various 
and complicated ceremonies from a distance of 
five yards. 

Nicholas and Joan watched the proceedings in 
silence for a moment. 

“ I suppose Paris is a bit of a surprise to you,” 
said Nicholas at last. 

“ I don’t know yet whether I am surprised or 
not,” said Joan. “ I am just distracted. It has 
been a whirl since I met Barbara at Waterloo. 
That was hardly a fortnight ago, and it seems years. 
We went to a theatre. It was so strange rushing 
off to a theatre like that. Mother always used to 
get ready for weeks.” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


45 


“ Get ready ? ” 

“ First we studied the criticisms, and then we 
booked seats a long time in advance. We used to 
discuss what we should wear, and then we used to 
read it up if it was Shakespeare or Barrie. But 
Barbara just said come along and see Denis Ainley ; 
and we went.” 

“ Did you like it ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Joan, “ he was simply lovely.” 

“ So is the mullet,” said Nicholas, “ it tastes of 
the Mediterranean.” 

“ How funny,” said Joan. 

She gave a little laugh ; which she knew at once 
must be explaineed if she did not want it to be 
attributed to the white wine. 

“ I mean,” she went on, “ you can’t very 
well compare Denis Ainley with a fish, can 
you ? ” 

“ The fish for me,” said Nicholas. 

“ Don’t you like the theatre ? ” Joan asked. 

“ When there’s a good play,” said Nicholas. 
64 About once in ten years,” he added with just a 
suspicion of irony. 

“ Oh,” said Joan, “ but you have seen everything, 
of course. I am not like that.” 

She was a little disappointed because he did not 
share her enthusiasm, and a little mortified by her 
own lack of experience. 

Nicholas, with his abnormal gift of sympathy, 
at once responded. “ Lucky Joan,” he said, “ I 
often wish I hadn’t seen so much.” 

It was the first time he had used her name. It 
slipped from him naturally, but already there was 


46 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


a note which gave to it a significance that could 
belong to no other syllable. 

Joan intuitively caught the note and their eyes 
met. Nicholas spoke at once to cover a tremor. 

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We’ll go to 
some theatres, and you shall help me to enjoy 
them.” 

“ That will be nice,” said Joan. 

“ It will be good for your French,” said Nicholas, 
suddenly moved to be very practical. “ Can you 
follow it more or less ? ” 

“Not very well,” said Joan. 

The waiter was now offering a second exhibit— 
to wit, a brace of partridges stuffed with oysters, 
so Nicholas informed her. 

Nicholas nodded, and the ritual proceeded as 
before. 

“Do you think Barbara will be pleased with 
us,” said Nicholas after a pause. 

There was humour in his eyes, with the ghost of 
a smile. In anyone but Nicholas there would have 
been a touch of mockery, but he was never the 
superior critic of humanity and Joan found nothing 
to resent. He included himself and his companion 
in an impersonal spirit of contemplation. 

“ Barbara really does want us to be friends,” 
said Joan. “ I suppose I am a bit of a responsi¬ 
bility.” 

Nicholas realised as he saw her there, flushing 
into intimacy, sensitive to the novelty of her sur¬ 
roundings, disarmed by his simple friendliness, 
responding naturally to the influences about her, 
quick to answer and eager to receive, that she was 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


47 


indeed a responsibility for all whom it might 
concern. And apparently he was destined to 
be very nearly concerned. Barbara had decided 
that. 

“ Everything is so unexpected,” Joan continued. 

“ I suppose so,” said Nicholas sympathetically. 

He looked round the crowded room, and realised 
what it must look like to a girl who had passed her 
life in a Sussex village which had not yet recognised 
the passing of Queen Victoria. For such a girl there 
must be something almost shocking in this environ¬ 
ment where so many people, bent only upon 
pleasure, devoted themselves to a complicated 
luxury of the table, and openly courted their 
women. He tried to see the scene for a moment 
with her eyes. He could think of no habit or 
standard that could remain firm under the assault 
of so much that ran contrary to everything she had 
encountered. To sustain her in such surroundings 
she had only such sweetness and sense as nature 
might have given—or withheld. 

Nicholas, looking back at Joan, saw in her a 
scarcely perceptible change, like water struck 
suddenly by a light wind that hits the surface 
without the strength to ruffle it. He turned to see 
what had produced this effect on her, and found 
that she was under the observation of a man who 
sat at a near table. There was nothing offensively 
direct in his behaviour, but he was clearly interested, 
and Joan was nervously aware of his interest. She 
moved uneasily and adjusted her wrap. 

He recognised Hugh Royden, an English painter 
who lived in Paris. Nicholas noted the hateful 


48 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


quickness with which the man had concluded 
that to claim acquaintance would not be tactful. 
Royden was like that. He always assumed the 
worst. He was assuming now that he had dis¬ 
covered Nicholas Fayle amusing himself in devious 
ways unsuspected by his friends. Nicholas read 
this in the swift glance of his smiling eyes. 

Happily, as Nicholas was relieved to note, the 
fellow was finishing his dinner, and would soon be 
leaving. His presence there seemed an intrusion, 
particularly as Joan was so painfully aware of his 
attention. 

Her experience held nothing that might enable 
her to see behind the eyes that covertly observed her, 
but her glances returned, unwillingly, to surprise 
him at intervals, in a further scrutiny. He had the 
penetrating look of the trained artist, and she felt 
as though he had a knowledge of her, hidden 
even from herself. 

Suddenly she realised that she was beginning to 
flush. It was an old trick that had often caused her 
terrible embarrassment. Some obscure nerve was 
touched, and it was the signal for an inundation. 
It was coming now, full flood. Royden, by this 
time on his way to the door, saw it with half an eye, 
though to all appearances he was unaware of her 
existence. 

“ That was a very distinguished looking man who 
has just gone out,” she said to Nicholas after he 
had disappeared. 

“ I know him,” said Nicholas briefly. 

“ He didn’t seem to know you” said Joan after 
a pause. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


49 


“ No,” said Nicholas, “ Let’s talk of something 
else.” 

“ What shall it be,” Joan prettily inquired. 

“ Yourself,” said Nicholas. 

Joan had never realised, till she began, how much 
there was to say on the subject. Nicholas had a 
gift of sympathetic inquiry which inevitably drew 
his companions into personal confidences. Soon he 
knew all there was to know about Joan’s life in 
Meadwell, her training in London, her girl friends 
and a few relatives. At every turn of the story he 
realised afresh how little she knew, how much she 
wished to know, and how ardently he desired that 
the knowledge should come up in her sweetly as a 
flower. 

Perhaps Nicholas, for all his gift of sympathy, 
would have been surprised by the extent of her 
confusion could he that night have followed the 
career of her sleepless thoughts. Even the figure 
which confronted her in the mirror of her wardrobe 
was strange. Audacious and unprecedented in 
the evening gown enforced by Barbara, it had no 
resemblance to the homely and cool spectacle of 
Meadwell days, and within the figure that looked 
back at her there was nothing that its owner could 
recognise or measure. When a few moments later, 
she lay in the dark room, restless and wondering, 
she felt a lightness and inconsequence of spirit 
almost disembodied in its lack of relation to any¬ 
thing familiar or assured. She tried to live again 
slowly her hurried life of the last few days, but the 
attempt broke down in a chaos of memories, to 
none of which could she assign order or proportion. 


50 LOOKING AFTER JOAN 

Her mind drifted involuntarily without conscious 
direction. 

Among the things that persisted were the intimate 
tones of Nicholas, and the look of the man at the 
restaurant whom Nicholas had said he knew. 


CHAPTER III 



§ 1 

UGH ROYDEN, when he was hard up, 
painted a picture of Notre Dame seen 
through the sparse autumnal leaves 
of the poplars on the Quai de Voltaire, and 
sold it for a moderately large sum of money. 
He had first painted this picture some thirteen 
years ago, and it had been purchased by the 
Luxembourg for its pretty handling of sunlight 
filtering through leaves, and its clever manipulation 
of a quaint idea. Since then he had painted it 
again whenever creditors became importunate, safe 
in the knowledge that the dealers would always be 
satisfied. There w r ere, of course, small variations. 
Sometimes he would leave out Notre Dame, and put 
in a chateau on the Loire, or a church in some little 
town of Brittany. Sometimes the veil through 
which it was seen would be the green buds of early 
spring instead of the sparse yellow' of autumn 
leaves. But it was the same picture. You identi¬ 
fied it immediately by the trees in the foreground, a 
sylvan filigree through v r hich one looked towards 
some striking specimen of architecture in grey 
stone. 

The morning after his sight of Joan and Nicholas 

51 





52 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


in the Bois, being unexpectedly pressed for money, 
he carried his easel down to the Quai de 
Voltaire, and prepared to paint it again. It was 
only from sheer force of habit that he went down to 
the quai. He could have painted that picture in his 
studio by the light of a pocket flash lamp ; and, 
only seldom, as he hastily got to work, did he even 
look towards Notre Dame. He was certainly not 
thinking of Notre Dame. He was thinking mostly 
of the woman who had brought him to this bitter 
pass of having to waste the better part of a week in 
trivial employment. He would have to paint that 
picture at least half a dozen times to liquidate his 
last infatuation. She had liked him, but she had 
insisted that he should pay for it. 

Under the influence of the spring morning, his ill 
humour gradually departed. One could do worse 
than sit in the sunshine painting for a livelihood. 
Even the painting need not be wholly mechanical. 
Something interesting was happening on the river, 
where the light rippled and shook. He had not 
seen quite that effect before. And above him, 
where the light was caught in a veil of green, 
through which it was spilled upon the grey stone of 
the quay, there were things worthy of attention. 
He felt a preliminary tremor, which warned him 
that if he were not careful, he would soon be trying 
to get some of these things into his picture. That 
would take time and raise a fever. He might even 
have to leave out Notre Dame altogether, and then 
he might not be able to sell the thing for months. 
That sunlight was very elusive and complicated if 
you took it seriously. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


53 


“ I shall be painting a picture in a minute,” he 
thought, “ and I can’t afford it.” 

Hastily he looked across to Notre Dame, and 
chalked in the familiar outline. 

Royden was a strikingly handsome man in the 
prime of life, spoiled to some extent by a bad 
mouth. He was of medium height, dark in colour¬ 
ing, but with penetrating blue eyes. He did not at 
all suggest the artist, being neatly and plainly 
dressed, with tidily clipped hair and short 
moustache. 

To still the aesthetic promptings which had so 
nearly deflected him from the straight path of 
successful commerce, he turned his thoughts else¬ 
where. It was thus that he found himself as he 
hastily weaved arboreal tissue into the foreground, 
remembering his sight of Joan on the previous 
evening. 

He had decided at once that he would like to 
paint her. He had seen more of her in those moments 
at the restaurant than most men would have 
seen after an acquaintance of several months, 
more than some men would ever have seen at all. 
He had noted how strange to her was her present 
environment, and how swiftly she responded to 
impressions. His inexorable eye of the painter had 
revealed her physically as his knowledge of women 
had stripped the secrets of her temperament. 

He smiled as he thought of Nicholas Fayle, 
gentle, quaint and reclusive, in the company of that 
radiant girl. Such an instrument deserved the 
practised hand. He looked at Joan with the 
insolence born of unreckoned conquests among 


54 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


women. He understood them, knowing how to 
please and to subdue ; and he had the unbounded 
egoism of the man of pleasure who believes that 
even his victims are fortunate. 

He speculated as to her status and origin. Prob¬ 
ably she was a member of the British delegation 
of the conference which was arranging a peace 
somewhere in Europe. It would be easy to get an 
introduction. 

This brought him to Barbara. He had met her 
two years previously and he was again to meet her 
at a delegation ball which was announced for next 
week, and to which he had been duly invited. The 
two girls were probably friends. It would be like 
Barbara to devote herself to that beautiful fledgling. 
Barbara adored beauty. Had she not almost 
consented to be fond of him for that reason alone ? 
Other women had admired his art, but it had 
turned out in the end that this was merely their way 
of approaching the artist. Barbara’s passion for 
beauty was genuine, and, if that other girl was 
also a member of the British delegation, Barbara’s 
interest was a foregone conclusion. Barbara, more¬ 
over, hated men, or, to put it more accurately, she 
hated the follies which women were provoked into 
committing for a man’s sake. She would wish to 
protect that other girl who, with such a face and 
such a temperament, would assuredly need pro¬ 
tection. 

He acknowledged the attraction of Joan, and 
deliberately speculated as to what might happen. 
It would, he supposed, be necessary to fill the place 
of the lady for whom he was painting Notre Dame. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


55 


Such arrangements were inevitable, fatally necessary 
and rather more satisfying than anything else in 
life, except, of course, the achievement of a really 
good line or a happy manipulation of the brush. 
Unfortunately, however, they had frequently 
happened before, and there began to be something 
mechanical in these transient affairs. He had 
begun to feel that he knew every stage of the way. 
He had found that women were very much alike 
within the narrow limits of what he asked of them, 
and their slight individual differences had ceased to 
lend a sufficient spice of variety to his adventures. 
Some required more preparation and management 
than others, but the critical moments of the inevit¬ 
able progress from aspiration to conquest and of the 
subsequent decline into disillusion had a deadly 
similarity. There were times when he could not 
help feeling that Don Juan must have been a 
singularly stupid fellow to have survived with 
undiminished zest a thousand and three. He 
feared the day would come when he would find 
himself intriguing not because he found it exciting 
or pleasant, or because it was likely to add anything 
of value to his experience, but because it had become 
a habit, wearisome, but inescapable. 

Barbara lived quite otherwise in his thoughts. 
He was afraid of Barbara. For two years he had 
pretended that he was not intimately involved, but 
the pretence was wearing thin. He began to sus¬ 
pect that there was something in his feeling for 
Barbara stronger than his pride, something that 
lived on a level with his art, and disturbed him with 
conceptions of moral beauty which he persistently 


56 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


denied in doctrine and practice. He feared the 
influence and attraction of Barbara. She was a 
hound of heaven whom instinctively he fled. In 
Barbara’s presence he was apt to feel as Achilles 
with an enemy who might at any moment have him 
by the heel. 

Barbara had admired his pictures, but had 
flouted his gallantry. There had been an occasion 
on which he had tried to make love to her. It had 
been mere foolishness, for this was before he had 
felt the premonitions of a genuine passion. She 
had been kind and it had been very hard to bear. 
Then she had seemed to forget that anything of the 
sort had happened—a fact that only accentuated 
her indifference. 

If, as he deduced, the unknown fair was a friend of 
Barbara and under Barbara’s protection, there were 
possibilities in the situation which might be worth 
exploring. Barbara might be brought to see that 
he was usually of some account with women. He 
did not put his idea into actual form. He did not 
definitely intend to strike at Barbara through her 
friend. But there was in this man an instinctive 
villainy which walked blindfold to ends that looked 
as though they had been predetermined by a 
Mephistophelian prevision. 

§ 2 

Among the more curious consequences of the 
Great War were the desultory encounters that 
recently took place between men of office and 
men of art in a conscientious effort to assist one 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


57 


another, first to save, and afterwards to re-fashion, 
the political world. Writers were absorbed into 
ministries of propaganda and information. Painters 
received commissions to record, to instruct, and 
even to amuse. Royden had not escaped. He was 
still, when he cared to remember it, a maj or in the 
British Army, and, in that capacity, had etched 
scenes of military life which, after being warmly 
commended at General Headquarters for their 
grim fidelity to fact, had been promptly sup¬ 
pressed by the censor as likely to dishearten the 
public. 

He had lately attended the Peace Conference of 
1918—for he had powerful friends in London—with 
results that had filled the assembled statesmen of 
Europe with indignation. He appeared to be 
incapable of drawing a modern leader of men 
without somehow giving him the appearance of a 
butler ; and, in most cases, one felt that it was not 
a very reliable or competent butler. His groups were 
even more disconcerting than his individuals. His 
assemblies had a helpless air as of actors rehearsing 
without a producer. It was not, he would urge, his 
fault. He had no ironical intention. He simply 
reproduced what he saw with an eye as naked as 
the camera. 

The delegation ball to which he had received an 
invitation was less an affair of State than a kind 
endeavour to amuse the officials of the conference. 
Invitations were issued broadcast, and almost every 
one on the delegation list attended. Joan was 
invited as the personal secretary of Nicholas. 

The ball was given in a large hotel near the 


58 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Etoile. To most of the guests it was terribly 
familiar. For several years they had been living 
the international life of conferences and councils 
and commissions, a life that was restless without 
variety. One large hotel is exactly like another, 
whether it be Rome or Paris or Brussels. The 
problems with which they dealt were invariably 
the same, and the staff was changeless. The same 
company of experts and secretaries collected about 
the same groups of ambassadors and ministers to 
discuss the same subjects. The remarks made at 
one conference equally well served for its successors. 
This international society, being a closed circle, had 
long since exhausted civilised topics of a general 
interest, and could now talk only of official business 
or amuse itself with scandal. 

For Joan, however, all was magnificent and 
unexpected. She sat alone in a retired corner of 
the immense room, feeling a privileged observer of 
history in the making. The routine of official life 
was for her a glimpse into high mysteries of state¬ 
craft, hitherto veiled by a press that spoke in 
riddles. She surveyed with awe the delegates who 
talked, imposingly and with ceaseless gesture, of 
frontiers and plebiscites and oppressed national 
minorities. She admired the young secretaries who 
so engagingly sought distraction in flippant opinions 
or light gallantry. She revelled in what was for 
her a paradise of pretty frocks and faultless mas¬ 
culinity. There were soft lights, attractive flowers, 
and music that throbbed in a fashion that was 
rather disturbing. 

She had danced once or twice, but without much 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


59 


success, being unpractised and not a dancer by 
temperament. But it was a delight to watch the 
others—especially Barbara. Barbara danced for 
the sake of no man, but for the dance itself. She 
was action and poise in being, light but irresistible 
of movement, immediately responsive and, at the 
same time, individual. Dancing for Barbara was 
not a social function, it was a motion of the spirit. 

She was dancing at this moment with a young 
man from Poland. She had accepted him as an 
expert, and he was allowed, as a reward for his 
dancing, to flirt with Joan between the numbers. 
There could be no harm in that, Barbara reflected. 
Joan was unable to understand a word he said, and 
had said at once that she did not like his eyes. 

The dance was finishing when Joan, who for a 
moment had lost a swift vision of Barbara floating 
on the breast of the music, became aware that she 
was under observation. She immediately recog¬ 
nised the man who was looking at her as the man 
she had seen in the restaurant. Barbara joined her, 
and to Joan’s surprise the man came forward. 

Mr. Hugh Royden was duly presented to Miss 
Weaver. 

At close quarters she liked his eyes, but found it 
difficult to meet them. With a deep reluctance of 
spirit she was drawn to him and held. His voice com¬ 
pleted a fascination that imprisoned her, though 
there was something that cowered from its charm. 

They were still at introductory phrases when 
Nicholas came up. After a short conversation be¬ 
tween the four of them Nicholas claimed Barbara 
and left Royden with Joan. 

E 


60 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


For Royden, the moment was decisive. He 
knew now that he loved Barbara as he had never 
yet loved, realising clearly and completely that 
there was no possible escape. The fact was inexor¬ 
able. It came home to him with the more convic¬ 
tion from seeing her with Joan, the seduction of 
whose flaxen promise was everything his previous 
observation had guaranteed. His eye assured him 
of that. Yet, in the company of Barbara, he found 
that Joan was extinguished. 

The artist had from the first been caught. The 
simple lines of Barbara delighted a draughtsman 
practised in the terse revealing stroke. All was 
direct, dexterous and amazingly relevant. And 
Royden already knew that, just as she was physi¬ 
cally built for a swift precision, she had a mind that 
was equally straightway and unerring. He loved 
the quick ray of her spirit, and there was a secret 
grace in him that would gladly have welcomed its 
searching. But there was also, in reaction from 
that grace, resentment and a perpetually affronted 
pride. She had a living beauty in her life which 
reproached him where most he was sensitive. 

The fact, revealed beyond doubt or change, that 
he loved her brought to a focus the conflicting 
emotions she had roused in him from the first 
moment of their meeting—admiration, desire, the 
appreciation of the artist, humility, wounded 
vanity, and hunger to possess. The revelation 
shook him to such a degree that he was hardly 
conscious for a moment of Joan left in his company. 
After a perceptible pause, he remembered. 

“Would you like to dance? ” he inquired politely. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


61 


“ I don’t dance very well,” Joan objected. 

He found to his dismay that she was speaking 
the truth. They circled the room, pedestrian and 
uninspired. He was aware of her as something 
girlish that clutched his hand a little desperately, 
and whose grasp now and then tightened upon his 
shoulder. He recognised that this was not an 
intended familiarity, but the sheer panic of a girl 
unused to the ballroom. There was no intention 
to disturb his equilbrium ; she was merely anxious 
to preserve her own. 

He looked at her sidelong, as she beat out the 
measure, intent, serious and a little out of breath. 
There was something attractive in a naivety so 
complete; and she was certainly very lovely. He 
was intrigued by that strange contradiction between 
elfin eyes and the fleshly feminine which was the 
rest of her. 

“ I should like to paint you,” he announced with 
a sudden insolence of attack which even for him 
was exceptional. 

“ You’ve hardly seen me yet,” said Joan, who 
was only nervous and did not mean to be pert. 

“ On the contrary,” said Royden, “ I saw you 
not long ago at a restaurant; I haven’t forgotten 
that.” He ended on a note as of one hopelessly 
enchanted. 

Barbara swept into view as he said it. He knew 
how her clear lip would have curved in contempt of 
an attack so grossly mechanical. 

“ It was rude of me the other evening ” he 
perversely continued, “ I almost stared.” 

“ I didn’t notice it,” said Joan. 


62 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ You knew me again for all that,” he retorted. 

Joan, concentrated on her steps, could yet feel 
that she was flushing 

“ I came here to night in the hope of seeing you,” 
he went on. “ Fayle is rather a friend of mine,” he 
explained. 

“ But you didn’t even look at him the other 
night,” said Joan, desiring to confute him in trifles. 

“ It would hardly have been tactful,” he answered. 

“You are a painter,” Joan inferred. 

“ Yes,” he replied. “ Haven’t you seen it ? ” 

She looked at him baffled. 

“ Notre Dame through the trees,” he explained 
“ I feel as though no gentleman’s house could now 
be complete without it.” 

The dance came suddenly to an end, and they 
found themselves standing beside Barbara and 
Nicholas. Royden noted at once the quick glance, 
anxiously protective, with which Barbara received 
her friend ; noted also the friendly smile with 
which Joan returned to Nicholas; noted again 
that Barbara approved the combination. 

They talked of the floor, the music and of how 
long they would be in Paris. Then the dancing 
began again, and Barbara was claimed by Royden. 

“Is it a new pastime, Barbara ? ” he asked, 
glancing maliciously at Nicholas and Joan grappling 
awkwardly for the waltz. 

“ Plait-il ? ” said Barbara. 

“ Aren’t you rather young for a matchmaker ? ” 
he explained. 

“ No scandal,” Barbara curtly commanded him. 

“ The penalty ? ” Royden inquired. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


68 


“ Dismissal,” said Barbara. 

“ I’m not afraid of that,” said Royden. “ You’re 
always glad of a reasonably good partner.” 

“ Perhaps,” said Barbara. “ But I like him to 
be quiet.” 

Royden resentfully obeyed. He did not like 
women who answered back. He liked them, as 
instruments, to do credit to his virtuosity. 

His thoughts returned to their first meeting two 
years ago. That too had been at a dance ; and, 
on the following day, he had called to make the 
personal acquaintance of the girl whom he had 
known the evening before only as a creature of 
poise and rhythm. She had come to his studio. 
He could see her now sitting on the model’s throne, 
looking eagerly at his best work, seeing, as the 
quick spirit alone can see, not merely his accom¬ 
plishment (which is so small a part of the artist’s 
wealth), but the things for which he had striven, 
and missed by the breadth of a straw. She had 
quoted Browning at him, and it had come from her 
as though it had been her own individual cry : 

“ Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, 

Or what’s a heaven for ! ” 

Then crassly he had made love to her. Not 
moved at that time by any sincere passion, but from 
an impulse, acquisitive and prompted by opportun¬ 
ity. She had met him with no startled recoil or 
quick contempt, but with a kind of slow wonder 
that so good an artist could fall so abruptly to the 
commonplace. His advances were evidently a part 
of the inevitable tedium which she expected sooner 


64 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


or later to suffer from most men with whom she w r as 
acquainted. It was an attitude that rankled still, 
whenever he remembered it. 

From that moment he had been careful to hide 
such proclivities from her observation. Fie had 
even referred to that occasion in the studio with an 
amused contempt for himself as having yielded to 
an impulse altogether unusual and rather absurd. 

He had so far succeeded in this hypocrisy that 
Barbara now counted him as frankly of her friends, 
one of the few men with whom she could talk intelli¬ 
gently without having to act continually on the 
defensive. 

He had painted her picture in long afternoons of 
sunlight, finding her always more intimate and 
inevitable after each sustained effort to express her 
in line and colour. He had sometimes wondered 
whether he was really trying to paint a picture or 
merely to discover Barbara. It was a painful 
question in which the pride of the artist and the 
vanity of the man were equally involved. He was 
becoming even as the realists. It was, moreover, 
something of a paradox, disagreeably suggestive 
and disconcerting, that a picture painted almost 
in defiance of his aesthetic principles should so 
astonishingly have succeeded. In the effort to dis¬ 
cover Barbara, he had apparently achieved high art. 

The dance ended and they sat in a cool corridor 
and talked. He referred again to Joan, telling 
Barbara of his proposal to paint her portrait. 

“You are surprised ? ” he added, in answer to a 
slight lift of the eyebrow in his companion. 

“ A little,” Barbara confessed. “ Won’t it be 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


65 


painting the lily ? The picture is already there. 
You don’t usually like them ready-made.” 

“ But that is not the picture I want to paint,” 
he replied. “ It will be something rather more 
amusing than a chocolate box.” 

“ You’ll have to be more explicit,” said Barbara. 
“ I’m responsible for Joan.” 

“ Your Joan is a contradiction,” he explained. 
“ She really oughtn’t to have such eyes: one 
doesn’t see them in that sort of girl.” 

Barbara was suddenly angry. She hated to 
acknowledge that women could be classified, 
and still more actively she resented that any 
man should assume it. The complacency of the 
assumption exasperated her all the more, as she 
admitted, in moments of exceptional candour, that 
it was alas ! too often justified by the event. 

44 If you want to dance with me,” said Barbara, 
44 you mustn’t suggest that women are assorted.” 

“ Tyranny! ” said Royden, 44 naked and absolute.” 

44 Retribution,” corrected Barbara. 

44 You confessed just now that your friend was a 
responsibility,” said Royden calmly. 

44 1 want to break it to her gently that too often 
men are merely men,” retorted Barbara. 

44 You painted my picture once,” she concluded 
abruptly. 

It was a debating flash, and Barbara was sorry 
almost as soon as she had said it. She had so far 
avoided any reference to that absurd scene two 
years ago in his studio. The stroke, she felt, was 
ungenerous. He had been on that distant occasion 
wholly ridiculous and completely at her mercy. 


66 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


She ought, as she had forgiven the offence, to have 
also forgotten it. She had not deliberately wished 
to bring it up against him. It was too much like 
killing the wounded. 

44 I’m sorry, Hugh,” she said impulsively, placing 
her hand on his sleeve. 44 The referee would call 
it a foul.” 

Royden could not at once respond. He was feel¬ 
ing again, after two years, the humiliation of her 
surprise when he had tried to make love to her. 
Her amused rejection of his gallantry, discon¬ 
certing at the time, was becoming increasingly 
painful in memory as he fell increasingly under her 
spell. That accursed scene stood irrevocably 
between them. No word or tone or gesture of 
approach was now possible. He feared too greatly 
to see renewed in her, at the slightest hint of a 
further advance, the slight he had suffered once 
and would henceforth die to avoid. 

44 I capitulate,” he said at last. 

44 Unconditionally ! ” 

44 On one condition You must allow me to paint 
your Joan.” 

44 Is it a sudden inspiration ? ” asked Barbara. 

44 Less than it seems,” he replied. 44 1 watched 
her the other evening at a restaurant with 
Fayle. Clearly there were possibilities. It 
will be a good picture, and I think it will be 
marketable.” 

44 How much did you get for me ? ” demanded 
Barbara. 

44 1 didn’t dispose of that one,” said Royden 
quickly. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


67 


“Oh!” cried Barbara, “surely I might have 
fetched you a trifle.” 

He knew she didn’t intend to affront the senti¬ 
ment which had prevented him from selling her 
portrait; she was quite innocently callous to that 
side of him. But to find her thus, without deliberate 
malice, insensitive to his secret, was bitter. He 
wanted to fling it in her face that he had kept the 
portrait because he prized it beyond all possible 
wealth, beause he had loved her unawares from 
the moment of his silly blunder, a love continually 
aggravated by her distance. But again his impulse 
was defeated. 

“ It’s my best picture,” he said. “ But nobody 
knows it yet. It would be bad business to sell it 
now.” 

There was a perceptible rasp in his delivery of this, 
and Barbara, raising her eyes at him in surprise, 
found that he was looking at her intently. There 
was in his look a baffled suggestion of the emotion 
he had suppressed, and for a moment she was 
startled. Royden, instantly alert, and resolute to 
avoid discovery, proposed that they should dance. 

Barbara, as she swept round the room with 
Royden, looked in vain for Nicholas, who at that 
moment was sitting with Joan in a pleasant 
seclusion. The previous dance had been for him 
an experience somewhat complicated and without 
precedent. He danced sufficiently well to leave him 
open to the finer impressions of a ritual that 
delivered into his arms a girl who even at a distance 
had begun to disturb him to a quite incalculable 
degree. Naively he wondered whether it was 


68 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


altogether becoming in him to be thrilled, as thrilled 
he undoubtedly was, by the perfunctory and licensed 
familiarities of the ballroom. Dancing was a 
social exercise, into which it was clearly indecorous 
to import any intimately personal significance. 
Yet here he was, strangely moved by the clasp of 
a lady’s hand, acknowledging a sweetness, quite 
uncanonical, in a propinquity that should have 
been no more than a necessary etiquette. He 
could hardly, however, break off the dance on 
the plea that he found it too enchanting. How 
was he to explain so delicate a scruple ? 

The scruple, admittedly, was absurd, the mis¬ 
giving of a recluse abnormally sensitive to any sort 
of contact with his fellows. It was increased by the 
demeanour of Joan, who candidly happy in his 
friendliness, and wholly unaware of the feeling she 
evoked, surrendered herself with serious goodwill 
to the adventure of moving through the throng 
successfully. 

“ That was nice,” said Joan, as, the dance ended, 
they moved at last towards a vacant corner. “ I 
liked it with you,” she added as he found her a 
chair. 

“ A tremendous compliment,” said Nicholas, 
“ coming after our friend Roy den. He’s one of the 
best.” 

“ I suppose you know him very well,” said Joan. 

“ Hardly at all. He’s a clever painter, and I 
once bought some of his earlier work. It will be 
valuable some day.” 

“ He makes me nervous,” Joan observed con¬ 
fidentially. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


69 


“Oh come,” protested Nicholas. “ He’s not as 
clever as all that.” 

“ I didn’t mean he was clever. But there’s 
something about him. He wants to paint my 
portrait,” she concluded with seeming irrelevance. 

“ That’s not a bad idea,” said Nicholas. 

“ You really want me to have it done ? ” said Joan. 

Somehow she was surprised that he should like 
Roydcn to paint her. In her surprise there was an 
element almost of offence that he should apparently 
be ready to surrender her to the charge of another. 

“ You couldn’t have a better man than Roy den. 
Some day his portraits will be famous.” 

“ But I don’t like him,” objected Joan. 

“ You’re not obliged to like the man who paints 
your portrait,” said Nicholas. 

“ I don’t like the way he looks at me,” Joan 
hastened to explain. 

“ How is that ? ” 

“ He makes me nervous,” she repeated mechani¬ 
cally. 

“It’s because he is a painter,” Nicholas explained. 
“ He looks at people as though he were trying to 
get them into focus.” 

But Joan was not convinced, and in this, for all 
her innocence, she had been born wiser than 
Nicholas. 

The music stopped, and Barbara came up with 
Roy den. The two men confronted one another, 
each in his way curious to observe the other. 

They made a striking contrast. For the first 
time Nicholas realised that there was something in 
Royden’s observation of his friends almost in- 


70 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


decently penetrating. He was looking, as it seemed, 
for secrets. His eyes were unveiling and acquisitive, 
searching out intimacies with a scrutiny that 
stripped its object, exposed its weaknesses and 
violated its sanctities. He realised at once that 
Royden was aware of his interest in Joan, and that 
he found it amusing. 

Meanwhile, Royden himself was under an obser¬ 
vation equally characteristic, and hardly less 
disturbing—the quiet, leisurely contemplation of 
an imaginative recluse, anxious to comprehend and 
instinctively discerning, but as yet unaided by any 
direct or intimate experience. Nicholas had the 
outlook of youth, as yet unaware of the intricate 
egoism of the man who takes from life all that he 
can successfully compass. He had no real know¬ 
ledge of the world, and for him the book of worldli¬ 
ness was sealed. It was precisely this that made 
his look a little embarrassing. It had in it some¬ 
thing of the direct gaze of a child, trusting but 
curious, waiting to see whether the object was 

Royden turned abruptly to Joan. 

“ Well, Miss Weaver,” he asked, “ have you 
decided it in my favour ? ” 

Joan, dismayed to find that the colour was 
sweeping into her face, turned to Barbara. 

“ He wants to paint me,” she said. 

“ Nobody seems to talk about anything else to¬ 
night,” said Barbara. 

“ Why not ? ” said Nicholas. “ Let it be a 
commission from me,” he added, turning to Royden. 

“A commission from heaven ” exclaimed Royden. 
“ We will begin to-morrow ! ” 


CHAPTER IV 


§ 1 

O N the following morning, which was 
Sunday, Royden, awaiting in his studio 
the arrival of Joan and Barbara, passed 
the time in a studied contemplation of his portrait 
of Barbara. He set it on an easel where it caught 
the sun and fronted it from an armchair where 
he sat smoking. He had painted her with the 
utmost simplicity in hat and burberry ; the tones 
were low except for her face and throat. There 
was a certitude of movement and line, which not 
only caught the eye at a glance, but held it and 
invited it to a further penetration. It was imme¬ 
diately striking, but it avoided grimace, and did not 
sacrifice depth to its preliminary effect. On the 
contrary, every line of the portrait had implication. 
The straight coat completely masked the lines of 
her figure, but in the fall and swing of it, as she 
stood arrested in a quick turning movement of the 
body, Royden compelled the eye to follow and 
fulfil the athletic grace of her shape and poise. He 
had a characteristic trick of obliging the spectator 
to complete a line which, finished in his own mind, 
was carried only a small part of the way on canvas. 
He would thus reveal the grace of a throat or 
shoulder without exposing them to the eye. 

71 


72 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


The artist was completely satisfied. He knew that 
this work was supremely good and he had the high 
kind of aesthetic pride which seeks no confirmation 
from others. He was affected neither by praise of 
work he knew to be inferior nor neglect of work he 
knew to be fine. The portrait of Barbara was a 
real achievement, and he was content to enjoy it 
alone. But the pride of the artist was dashed by 
the wounded conceit of the man whom Barbara had 
brushed aside. There facing him from the easel, 
was the girl who escaped him, a spirit that he would 
never be able to trouble, something beyond his reach. 

His attention was distracted by desultory flitting 
movements in the gallery at the end of the 
studio. It was a long airy room at the top of a fine 
old house in an alley that lay off the Boulevard 
Montparnasse. At the far end was an oaken 
gallery, not unlike that in which the organ and 
choir were placed in churches of the renaissance. 
A spiral stair led to the gallery, which was his 
sleeping apartment. The girl moving there, from 
whom not long ago he had agreed to part, had come 
that morning for the last shreds of her property. 

It had been a characteristic episode, in which he 
had been generous, discreet and always a master 
in his own house. The sound of her mouselike 
activities soothed and reassured his wounded self¬ 
esteem. Here, at any rate, was “ that sort of 
girl,” pert, pretty and irremediably a plaything. 
Not even Barbara could question that. No : 
but Barbara was the kind of woman who would be 
all sweet tolerance for the girl. For him she 
would be merely devastating. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


73 


He called to the girl to make haste. He was 
expecting visitors, and had an important com¬ 
mission. She answered him gaily, and he went to 
find her a taxi. 

The girl with whom he was now parting amicably 
and without regret stood for all that he had as yet 
sought or found in his relations with women : 
pleasure lightly won and lightly paid, companion¬ 
ship into which he might pleasantly relax after 
masculine effort, easy sympathy for his more 
obvious ambitions, tributes to his vanity of the 
gallant male, flattery for the success with which he 
invariably justified his assumption that he under¬ 
stood the kind of woman whom it is easy to under¬ 
stand. It had all been very satisfactory and even 
stimulating. He was naturally of a sensuous habit, 
and custom had made it almost impossible for him 
to live alone. Nevertheless, he had begun to feel 
the premonitions of a boredom that must needs 
grow as the years advanced. He had begun to be 
impatient of the moods and phases that recurred 
with a damnable iteration in the course of his facile 
conquests. He had lived in a paradise of fools and 
there was something, above and beyond the fool in 
him, that only Barbara could satisfy. Suddenly he 
felt that, rather than continue in that paradise, he 
would choose to live alone with an impossible 
aspiration. 

He accompanied the girl to the taxi, and, return¬ 
ing to the studio, busied himself mechanically with 
preparations for his guests. 

Barbara arrived about half an hour later with 
Joan and Nicholas. Nicholas had been invited, at 


74 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


the last moment, on the ground that, as a con¬ 
noisseur, he would doubtless like to look at some 
of Royden’s portfolios. They came in a holiday 
spirit, a product of the sunny morning and relations 
wholly congenial. Royden was for a moment alien 
to their humour, an intruder into a circle of good 
comrades. 

They clustered in front of Barbara’s picture, and 
for a while there was silence. Nicholas spoke first. 

“ Barbara,” he said, 44 you’re a masterpiece.” 

She slid her gloved hand under his arm, smiling at 
his enthusiasm. 

Royden, stung by the simple friendliness of her 
action, intervened abruptly. 

44 The low tones in brown-” he began pro¬ 

fessionally. 

44 Tones be bothered,” said Nicholas. 44 We’ll 
go into that later on. You’ve got Barbara herself— 
Diana in a mackintosh.” 

44 Shorthand, typewriting, and four European 
languages,” added Barbara. 

44 Atalanta in Calydon,” said Nicholas. 44 But she 
wouldn’t have stooped for apples.” 

44 Oh, yes I might,” said Barbara, 44 if I had liked 
him very much ! Even Artemis had her admirers ! ” 

44 Hippolytus ? ” Royden scoffed. 44 You’re 
hardly likely to find him in Paris ! ” 

44 This conversation is becoming too difficult for 
me,” said Nicholas. 

44 WTiat do you think of it, Joan, darling ? ” 
Barbara inquired. 44 The portrait, I mean.” 

44 1 think it’s wonderful,” said Joan. 

44 But I don’t know anything about it really,” 



LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


75 


she hastened to add, flushed by the attention 
caused by her remark. 

“ There,” cried Barbara, turning to Royden. 
u Out of the mouth of babes ! You ought to be 
very proud.” 

“ These testimonials are encouraging,” said 
Royden gravely. 

“ Why did you put me on view this morning ? ” 
asked Barbara. 

“ To set myself a good example,” Royden replied. 
“ I want to do justice to Miss Weaver.” 

He turned to her with a smile, where she stood, 
bending over the back of a chair, and still looking at 
the portrait. 

“ How are you going to do it ? ” asked Nicholas. 
“ Why not as at present ? 

“ The blessed damozel leaned out 

From the gold bar of heaven.” 

“ Not quite,” said Royden. “ Just arrived from 
heaven, perhaps, destination unknown.” 

Barbara shut her lips at this, a slight gesture, 
but Royden did not miss it. 

“It isn’t lawful even to joke about her pretty 
nursling,” he thought. 

The group broke up, and he placed Joan, after 
she had removed her hat and coat, in a chair, sitting 
quite naturally, leaning slightly back and looking 
straight at the easel. 

“ You’ll find the portfolios in the cabinet,” he 
called to Nicholas. 

“ I’m going to watch,” said Barbara. 

“ Some of the time,” said Royden. “ But wiien 
you begin to be tired, I want you to help with the 

F 


76 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


picnic. There are all kinds of things in the kitchen 
and the bonne isn’t altogether to be trusted.” 

“ Say when,” said Barbara. 

Roy den was already at work, and Joan found 
herself, not without misgiving, subject to a scrutiny 
from which she shrank till, collecting her courage, 
she remembered that Barbara, surveying her 
beforehand, had pronounced quite definitely that 
she would ‘ do.’ Though defenceless to observa¬ 
tion, it was reassuring to be certain that she was 
well dressed. 

Royden put down his palate and came to her. 

“ Allow me,” he said. 

He settled the collar at her throat, and 
pulled a fold of her blouse so that it lay closer 
to her figure. He touched her with the passion¬ 
less hands of an artist for whom his model 
is for the moment clay. Joan, against her will, 
was embarrassed, and Royden, noting it as he 
withdrew, smiled at her as though there existed 
between them an intimate connivance. She looked 
away from him to the easel, where she was aston¬ 
ished to see how rapidly he worked. She followed 
almost with a panic the swift pencil as it revealed 
her. To her heightened sensibility it seemed as 
though it were playing upon her directly. It was 
exposing her there inexorably with infallible 
perception. She had almost the sensation of being 
touched, fascinated by the trick of the daughtsman’s 
hand that completed in the air the stroke from 
where it stopped short on the canvas, seeming to 
create an aerial figure in a fantastic reproduction of 
her own. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


77 


Royden worked in haste, fearing to lose the 
effect. It was just what he wanted—that look of 
the spirit caught helplessly in a thicket. He 
sketched the eyes, wide open, direct, but flinching 
as though in avoidance, and with a few rude strokes 
lowered her collar at the throat and enriched the 
curve of her shoulder. 

Barbara’s voice broke in suddenly, as he paused 
to see the result. 

“ Joan, dear,” she was saying, “ is it so very 
dreadful ? You look like a baby that’s going to 
cry at the photographer ” 

Royden, annoyed at the interruption, realised 
with amazement that for the moment he had for¬ 
gotten Barbara. So much the better. Apparently 
his art still mattered most. He was still able to 
lose himself in that. 

He had got the effect he wanted ; the picture 
was safe ; it had only to be painted. Barbara’s 
intervention had broken the almost hypnotic tension 
that had held artist and subject sensitively in 
relation. Joan awoke to realities. She saw now 
only a rough sketch of herself, a pencil that traced 
confused outlines, a man that looked at her with 
eyes absorbed by problems with which she per¬ 
sonally had no very real concern. 

“ Turn your head just a fraction to the right,” 
said Royden. “ I can’t quite see what is happening 
under your left ear.” 

Nicholas put down a portfolio and strolled over 
to view the progress. Joan, now at her ease, wel¬ 
comed him with a smile. He commented on the 
drawing, and the two men plunged into a technical 


78 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


discussion in which Joan distinguished but little 
that was significant. Royden, now preparing his 
palette, set it down a moment and adjusted a blind 
on the toplight. A beam struck her obliquely, 
sifting through her hair, which on the surface 
sprayed into yellow mist, carried upon flaxen masses 
firm and rich in comparison. Her flesh, soaked in 
the living ray, was pale and lucent, receiving the 
warmth and glory of the sunlight with the sensitive 
stillness of a flower. 

44 Weave , hands angelical ! ” 

Involuntarily Nicholas remembered the lines he 
had transcribed for his anthology. There, too, 
cunningly left in comparative shadow by the 
blinding ray, were the wood-browned pools, 
scooped for her eyes, with their haunting suggestion 
of something alien. 

44 Royden,” he said softly, “ you are a magician.” 

44 A Renoir,” said Royden coolly, “ with, I hope, 
something of my own.” 

44 Somebody ought to play Uapres-midi d’un 
faune ,” said Barbara. 44 1 don’t know why.” 

44 In pursuit of a nymph by Fra Angelico,” 
said Royden. 

44 We’re all very allusive this morning,” said 
Nicholas. 

44 Environment,” Barbara explained. 44 Did 
you ever see such a place ? Hugh reminds me of 
the man in Tennyson’s Palace of Art.” 

44 Oh ! please,” cried Royden in mock distress. 
44 Not in Tennyson ! I simply couldn’t bear it.” 

Barbara’s reference was apt for the studio. 
Royden loved every form of art, fine or applied, 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


79 


and there was hardly an object in the room which 
was not in its way significant. None of the arts was 
unrepresented. From the corner, which was his 
workshop, with its sketches and reproductions of 
acknowledged masters, drenched in sunlight, the 
eye went to a restful corner by the chimney where 
he kept his books, never too many at a time, 
ranging from the Greek, which he affected most, to 
the latest excesses of modem France. He had a 
wide literary range reaching from the Ulysses of 
Homer to the Ulysses of James Joyce. Beyond the 
chimney was a mechanical piano with a cabinet 
that ranged from Mozart to Malapieri. On a table 
beside the piano was a miniature theatre, complete 
with lighting effects and exquisite puppets, at 
present grouped for a scene from Princess Tur- 
andot. Royden was a faithful correspondent of 
Stanislawsky and Craig, and still hoped for a 
recognition of his merits by the lords of London and 
Paris. 

§2 

An hour passed quietly and swiftly. Royden, 
absorbed in his work, did not once break the silence. 

Barbara went into consultation with the bonne in 
the kitchen which lay at the back of the gallery. 

Nicholas, apparently absorbed in a portfolio, 
looked every now and then towards Joan, im¬ 
mobile in her chair. Often she looked across at 
Nicholas and smiled. He was aware of her slightest 
movement, and his portfolio was a refuge. He had 
fled to it headlong from his vision of Joan in the 
sunlight . He glanced towards her from time to time 


80 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


but feared to renew the trouble of that devastating 
moment. Such emotion was wholly new to him, 
The quiet observation of men and things in which 
he had passed the greater part of his life had con¬ 
tained nothing acutely personal. He had watched 
the surface of life with the curiosity of a child, 
playing his part with distinction by virtue of a fine 
taste and an imagination which gave him intuitive 
sympathy with the feelings and ideas of others, but 
remaining incredibly unaffected. His many years 
of intercourse with men and his friendly interest in 
women left him with a mind enriched ; but all this 
had as yet no personal application. He collected 
his poets, as he plotted his statistical tables, 
appreciating the symbol, extending his knowledge, 
refining his perception, but coming no nearer 
to the human realities involved. All that he had 
amassed from the art and literature of the world 
waited as a possible commentary on something as yet 
unfulfilled. Art was, for him, emotion anticipated in 
tranquillity, and now the tranquillity was breaking. 
He had begun to feel the first stirring of this 
necessary revelation, and it raised in him an emotion 
in which delight and fear were curiously mingled— 
an adolescence of the soul confronted with a power 
which drew it from security and in the shock of 
which it feared to be unseated. 

Barbara, busy with picnic preparations, sum¬ 
moned hin at last from the room, and Joan for the 
first time found herself alone with Royden. As a 
result of her morning in the studio she had more 
than ever the feeling of one lost and uncertain of 
everything. Nothing on which her eye could rest 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


81 


was in the least familiar or comprehensible. For 
the first time she was brought into touch with the 
clean nudities of art, and was made aware of beauty, 
abstract and untrammelled. She could not analyse 
her feelings, but somehow she felt that life in that 
place had sweetened and broadened into something 
finer and more at liberty. The old contracted 
standards did not here suffice, but she realised that 
there must be something to take their place. 
Perhaps she would soon discover and understand. 

Meanwhile, she was aware of a further crumbling 
of footholds. This, indeed, was a more serious re¬ 
volution than any that had gone before. So far 
she had been troubled by the possibility that at any 
moment she might not in her new surroundings 
know quite how to behave ; she had even found 
that she did not always know how to think ; here, 
however, the pagan art of Greece, with its joyous 
revivals, proclaimed in plaster and bronze that she 
did not even yet perhaps know how to feel. It 
was yet another problem to be mastered, in which 
Nicholas might help her as in all the rest. She 
remembered how, on entering the studio, Nicholas 
had lightly touched with his fingers the replica of a 
nymph by Rodin, and stood a moment to admire 
the nervous modelling of shoulder and back. She 
had noted the fine delight in his eyes. She would 
have to learn to feel like that, to overcome the 
embarrassment that troubled her, to be less conscious 
of the arms and legs. 

There was really no one but Nicholas on whom 
she could rely. Of course, there was Barbara, but 
Barbara belonged partly to the old life, whereas 


82 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Nicholas belonged altogether to the new. He was 
the only part of the new life that had from the 
first been comprehensible, friendly and accessible. 
She felt that, though he apparently belonged to the 
world in which she was for the moment a stranger, 
he was, nevertheless, more closely allied to her than 
to the surroundings in which they moved. She had 
felt it at the restaurant, where, of an aspect glitter¬ 
ing and assured, the world had seemed to create 
for them a quiet and intimate solitude peculiar to 
themselves. She felt it again in this disconcerting 
studio, packed with the thought and passion of 
ages. 

She had a moment almost of panic when Nicholas 
left the room. It was as though her last refuge had 
been withdrawn. She was now quite alone in a 
world with no familiar landmarks. She felt that, 
whatever happened, she would be helpless to react 
or respond as the situation required. Almost 
certainly there were elements that must be chal¬ 
lenged and resisted. But how was she to distin¬ 
guish them from the things that were merely novel 
or from things accepted by Nicholas and Barbara 
as part of a larger order ? 

There was, for example, the problem of Royden’s 
attitude to herself. Instinctively she shrank from 
the licence of his eyes, but neither Nicholas nor 
Barbara had noted it, or, if they had noted it, they 
apparently regarded it as a natural prerogative of the 
artist, no more to be condemned or resented than 
the admiration of Nicholas for Rodin’s nymph. 
She feared to betray misgiving, lest, in the belief 
that she was resenting something that threatened 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


83 


her, she should find herself in the position of a 
social novice convicted of an error in deportment. 
When Royden had arranged the blouse at her 
throat, she had been dreadfully aware of his physi¬ 
cal approach, the firm touch of his capable fingers, 
the texture of his sleeve. Clearly at that moment 
he had been serenely professional, but he had, it 
seemed, immediately afterwards been conscious of 
her disturbance ; and, in the look he gave her on 
his return to the easel, a vague kind of complicity 
had appeared to be established between them. Or 
was this the figment of an inexperience that 
peopled the world with impossible adventures ? 
The doubt was sufficient to paralyse her defences. 

Royden put down his palette. 

“ There,” he said, “ that will do for this morning.” 

Joan broke her pose, finding herself unexpectedly 
exhausted and even a little dizzy. For a moment 
her head swam and she leaned faintly back. 

Royden hurried towards her. 

“ I’m all right,” she said hastily before he could 
reach her. 

“ Sorry,” said Royden, “ I orght to have noticed. 
Posing is hard work, and it’s a strain that you 
don’t always realise till it’s over. You did it so 
well that I didn’t realise you were a novice.” 

“ I suppose you’ll want me to sit again,” said 
Joan, looking doubtfully at the rough sketch on 
which the colour lay in dishevelled patches. 

“ I shall want you to give me another two hours 
this afternoon.” 

“ And then will the picture be finished ? ” 

“ You remember what Racine said when 


84 LOOKING AFTER JOAN 

they asked him how far he had got with a new 
play ? ” 

“ No,” said Joan. 

“ He said he had finished it; all he had to do 
was to write it.” 

“ I see,” said Joan. “ He meant that he had it 
in his head.” 

“ Yes,” said Royden gravely. “ That was 
probably what he meant.” 

“ He’s hatefully conceited,” thought Joan. 

“ We’ve got on splendidly this morning,” he 
continued. “You were just as I wanted you, and 
you never moved. You reminded me of a physi¬ 
ologist I once knew.” 

He sat on the model’s throne at her feet, looking 
up at her with amused and critical eyes. Joan 
opened her lips as though to speak but said nothing. 
She felt somehow that he was playing with her, 
and she did not want to assist him. Royden con¬ 
tinued : 

“ He set great store by vivisection, and he invari¬ 
ably used curare. The animals are paralysed and 
cannot move, but they are conscious.” 

Joan caught her breath. 

“ How horrible ! ” she shuddered. 

“ That was Barbara’s view,” said Royden calmly. 

“ Barbara ? ” 

“ We visited the laboratory together one after¬ 
noon, and found him at work.” 

“ What did she do ? ” Joan asked. 

“ She killed the rabbit,” said Royden calmly. 
“ I thought for the moment that she was going to 
kill the man.” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


85 


He fell silent on the memory of Barbara on that 
summer afternoon. He could see her still, a 
passion of pity in her eyes, into which the tears 
had started, the bloodstained scalpel in her hand, 
trembling with scorn that broke over the fellow 
like an avalanche and left him, without a word, 
stupidly staring at their departure. 

Royden, remembering the incident, felt rather like 
a man hit with his own boomerang. He had alluded 
to it casually, aiming at Joan, on whom it was a 
species of mild experiment in mental vivisection. 
But it had brought him back to Barbara, and he 
rose impatiently. 

“ Let’s see what they’re doing about the picnic,” 
he said. 

He gave Joan his hand to help her from the chair, 
and Joan took it with just a perceptible hesitation. 
Mischeviously aware of her embarrassment, he 
bent gallantly and kissed her fingers. With an 
involuntary “ Oh ! ” she hastily caught them back. 
Then she coloured, confused between the reserve 
that had prompted her recoil and a fear that it 
might be absurd. 

“ You mustn’t be so easily alarmed,” said Roy¬ 
den, mocking her embarrassment. “ I only wished 
to thank you for your splendid help this morning.” 

44 1—I wasn’t expecting it,” Joan faltered. 

“ In a foreign country,” Royden smiled, “ the 
unexpected often happens. One takes things as 
they come.” 

Joan, feeling as though she were being driven 
into a corner, suddenly summoned up her young 
courage and faced him. 


86 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ Is it really usual, what you did just now ? ” 

“ Of course it’s usual,” said Royden. “ You 
really musn’t assume that a thing like that is 
improper.” 

Joan felt the colour flooding into her face, and 
could almost have cried with vexation. 


§ 3 

At five o’clock in the afternoon Royden declared 
that, so far as Joan personally was concerned, he 
had finished the picture. He had all the indications 
he needed, and would complete his work unfettered 
by further reference to his original. 

Nicholas strolled over and inspected the indica¬ 
tions. 

“ Royden,” he said, “ you paint your pictures as 
some dramatists write their plays, beginning in a 
passion with the third Act, and filling in the rest at 
leisure.” 

“ How do you like my third Act ? ” 

“ I see the idea.” 

“ So do I—at present. That’s why I’m not going 
to allow Miss Weaver to sit again. I might lose my 
idea in pursuit of the many charming irrelevancies 
which would be bound to present themselves. Mean¬ 
while, as we’ve been working very hard to-day, I 
propose dinner at Henry’s and a loge at the Antoine. 
Friend Gemier is doing the Shrew this evening.” 

“ But it’s only five o’clock,” said Joan. 

“ In Paris,” said Royden, “ it’s essential to learn 
how to do nothing between five and seven. It isn’t 
difficult—in Paris.” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


87 


They left in a taxi and, after taking the girls to 
their hotel, Nicholas and Royden awaited them by 
arrangement at the Cafe des Lilas. 

46 A melancholy spot,” said Royden as they 
sipped vermouth in the level rays of the sun. 

Thousands of young Englishmen sit here every year 
hoping to see characters by Murger or Du Maurier. 
And it never happens. They find me here instead.” 

Nicholas, in a mood to see the best of everybody, 
thought the exchange not so entirety deplorable. 
Royden was anywhere a striking figure. There was 
no mistaking his capacity. He had the indefinable 
distinction of the man who spends much of his time 
in lonely effort, for the results of which he asks 
neither praise nor mercy. A sensitive observer 
might detect the artist in the occasional and 
involuntary heightening of his interest in things 
which would have escaped a casual observer, and 
in desultory fits of absorption in some inward 
process of thought or fancy. But there was nothing 
that obviously betrayed his profession. He avoided 
eccentricity, having in his temperament no touch of 
the charlatan. He had a face that on the whole 
commanded confidence. There was force in the 
brow and chin. The lift of the eyebrows, the slow 
result of a mocking habit, was not necessarily unlike- 
able. It betrayed a sense of comedy that was not en¬ 
tirety cynical. The bad lines of the mouth were partly 
concealed by his moustache. Slack, it betrayed the 
sensualist, and, as though conscious of this betrayal, 
Royden kept it continually under control, so that 
it suggested a contrast between the artist who 
strove ascetically for beauty, and the man who fell 


88 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


to his senses by the way. A physiognomist might 
find in this face a startling disharmony, hinting at 
a disastrous interplay of human forces in which every 
quality of the artist ran the risk of finding itself 
cheapened or perverted in the man. 

Nicholas, however, was in no mood to read 
between the lines of his companion. He had seen 
that day only the best of Royden, intent upon his 
craft and pricked by a genuine inspiration. 

“ It’s been a good day,” said Nicholas, raising 
his glass. 

“ Yes,” said Royden. “ Thank God for work ! ” 
he added vehemently. 

The exclamation broke from him involuntarily, 
almost with passion. 

“I think I understand,” said Nicholas. “To have 
that wonderful power in you and to use it finely 
must be as nearly like heaven as a fellow can get.” 

Royden looked keenly at Nicholas, touched for a 
moment by his sensitive comprehension. Royden 
hated all amateurs of art, resenting equally their 
commendation or censure. This quiet recluse, how¬ 
ever, whom he had despised for his innocence of 
life, and secretly mocked for his appreciation of art, 
had certainly the gift of sympathy. The fellow 
understood, undeceived by the stuff of the market, 
and feeling sure of Royden’s best work as Royden 
himself. It was a strange case altogether: a man who 
knew nothing of affairs, who yet advised cabinets 
and conferences, a man who new nothing of life, 
and who yet loved and understood what the artists 
had caught from life and expressed in line and 
colour and song. Some day, perhaps, he would 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


89 


wake to the realities of the visionary world in which 
he moved. That would be interesting, for it must 
needs be a rude awakening. 

Royden’s sympathy faded in the desire to probe. 
He had the instincts of a vivisector, laying bare 
impalpable tissues of the soul. 

“ Your Joan was an excellent subject,” he began. 

Nicholas put down his glass in a flush of emotion. 
A shameful sweetness was rebuked by something 
that was almost indignation. Royden’s careless 
assumption of intimacy between himself and the 
girl touched in him an aspiration unconfessed, a 
secret hope. But at once a chivalry, fine-drawn and 
fantastical, sprang to defend her against an un¬ 
authorised allusion. He even wondered whether 
there was not a deliberate malice in Royden’s 
observation. Royden, however, was too refined a 
practitioner to give himself away. He had touched 
a nerve, and, silently recording the fact, was now 
casually observing a small boy, who at a corner of 
the street was looking in penniless envy at an old 
woman who was marketing toy balloons. He 
beckoned to the old woman, and felt in his pocket 
for francs. 

“ Barbara’s Joan,” corrected Nicholas. 

“ Oui, madame ,” Royden was explaining, “ le 
ballon en bleu. Oui—a ce 'petit gamin la .” 

“ Sorry, Fayle,” he said. “ What were you 
saying just now—something about Joan, wasn’t 
it ? ” 

Barbara’s Joan,” repeated Nicholas quickly. 

“ Our Joan,” said Royden, with a laugh. “ I’m 
painting her. Barbara loves her, and you— 


90 LOOKING AFTER JOAN 

hullo ”—he broke off—“ the little fellow’s afraid 
to take it.” 

Indeed, the old woman, with abundant gesticula¬ 
tion, was trying to persuade the urchin to accept the 
balloon, waving her hands towards the so amiable 
gentleman who had purchased it. But the boy, 
distrustful of his good fortune, was moving away, 
almost in terror. Royden, in a few sweeping 
steps, came up with him and pressed him to 
accept. The boy, doubtful to the last, took it 
with much hesitation, and backed slowly away 
from his benefactor. Finally, arrived at a safe 
distance, he turned suddenly and took to his heels, 
the balloon held tightly in his hand as though the 
whole covetous world were his enemy. 

Royden returned, laughing, to the table. 

“ You saw that! ” he exclaimed. “ He wanted 
it so much that when, suddenly by a miracle, it 
was offered him for nothing, he was afraid to take 
it. He couldn’t help feeling that it must be some 
sort of trap ; he was afraid simply because it was 
unusual. It was something too good to be true. 
He isn’t in the habit of getting balloons ; so he’s 
frightened and thinks it can’t be right to accept 
them. Finally, he runs away, defying fate, 
thinking he has done something bold and impious. 
There’s a picture for you of man civilised by 
prohibition. We’ve come to such a pass that we’re 
often afraid to take what we want simply because 
we want it.” 

Nicholas looked at Royden in astonishment, and 
Royden laughed. 

“ Don’t notice me to-night,” he said. “ Any- 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 91 

how, that’s quite a short speech for the Caf6 des 
Lilas.” 

He took Nicholas impressively by the arm. 

Fayle,” he said, “ a word of advice. Don’t be 
afraid of it. Life’s too short.” 

Barbara and Joan were coming round the corner 
as he spoke. 

“ Welcome, Barbara,” he continued. “ You’ve 
just missed an improving conversation.” 

“ Subject,” Barbara inquired. 

“ Balloons,” said Roy den. 

Barbara looked significantly at the glasses on the 
table. 

“ No,” said Royden, “ you’re quite wrong. 
Only vermouth and a fine evening.” 

Barbara turned to Nicholas. 

“ What’s the matter with him,” she asked. 

“ Royden is light-hearted,” said Nicholas, 
smiling. 

“ Light-headed,” corrected Royden. 

They sat awhile at the Cafe till Royden found 
it was time to move. He insisted on two taxis. 
The evening, he said, was at this hour too heavenly 
to be spoiled by overcrowding. He wanted space 
to enjoy it. Barbara agreed. 

“ The green one looks rather nice,” she said. 
“ I’ll take you in that.” 

So Nicholas in another moment found himself 
driving down the boulevard with Joan. The 
evening, as Royden had observed, was fine, one 
of those delicious evenings in spring when the 
earth, warmed through by the sun, cools sweetly 
under an open sky, and the air comes and goes like 

G 


92 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


a messenger with gifts from invisible fields. The 
trees of the boulevard in their early green had a 
sentient air, and a lonely cloud, heavy and fruitful, 
awaited in the east, as though confident of a 
promised rapture in the last light of the sun. 
Joan, filled with a nameless happiness that united 
her with the evening, sat serious and still, illumined 
like the stones and trees (as sometimes they seem 
under a luminous evening sky) with a radiance 
that seemed almost as though it resided in herself. 

She was glad to be alone with Nicholas. She 
was beginning tremendously to rely upon him as 
a present help in time of apprehension. He was 
infinitely more reassuring than Barbara. Barbara 
had touched life at so many points, and she had 
so much in her nature which Joan was unable to 
share or understand. In Barbara’s talk of men 
and life there were, sooner or later, reserves which 
it was impossible to invade, mysteries withheld, 
hints of an experience from which Joan was 
excluded. With Nicholas all was open and free. 
Never did he seem to hesitate or withhold anything 
he felt or knew. An expedition with Nicholas was 
like a friendly exploration in which he led the way 
because he had been there before, but in which he 
was equally with herself a discoverer. With 
Barbara she felt as though she were under escort. 
They went forth together as into a hostile country, 
of which Barbara alone appreciated the perils, 
and where Barbara was alone responsible for their 
safety. Of Royden she feared to think at all as a 
leader in such enterprises. He was the enemy— 
representing something unfamiliar and obscure 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 93 

that had set an ambush among undiscovered 
ways. 

She shivered slightly, and with a movement of 
which she was hardly conscious pressed almost 
imperceptibly nearer to Nicholas. Nicholas, feeling 
the movement, put his hand softly upon her sleeve. 

He looked at her with a question in his eyes, 
but it was a question from which he fled. 

“Not catching cold ? ” he asked. 

“ No,” said Joan. 

Nicholas hardly realised as yet that he was 
falling in love. He suffered the ancient process, 
not as one who knows whither he is going and can 
name the stages of his advance, but as one un¬ 
schooled and ingenuous, to whom each moment 
sufficed for its own sake and filled him with an 
emotion that required from him no act of will or 
expression. He was exquisitely aware of the girl 
beside him. Her every movement filled him with 
delight. The cool air fluttered her violet scarf 
which escaped control and lay streaming across his 
shoulder. 

He felt it as an emanation from herself. When 
she moved towards him, though it was a contact 
so light as hardly to close the space between them, 
he was moved, in sudden happiness, to touch her 
sleeve and almost at once to wonder in confusion 
whether he had not presumed upon an accident. 
So he had merely asked (or it seemed that he had 
heard himself ask) whether she was cold. 

Thus they remained. Nicholas absorbed and 
enchanted and fearing to break the spell, Joan 
glad of the friendly touch upon her arm, till they 


94 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


came to a stand at Henry’s, and Barbara’s voice 
broke in casually from the rear, where the other 
taxi arrived almost simultaneously. 

“ A dead heat,” she proclaimed. 

Royden, during the drive with Barbara, had 
exceeded in extravagance. He was in the mood 
of a man who, feeling it difficult to keep emotion 
at arm’s length, seeks relief in licence of word and 
fancy. He had sat with Barbara during the drive, 
appalled by the knowledge that he was moment¬ 
arily more in need of her, seeking an escape from 
his fixed idea in irrelevant by-play. Something in 
him, aloof and critical, was watching this extrava¬ 
gant performance as one might watch an urchin 
turning cart wheels. Barbara, serenely unaware of 
his disturbance, was nevertheless astonished at 
his lack of consequence. He dashed from topic 
to topic, speaking heedlessly, with but little 
connection of mood or matter. 

“ I am but mad, North-North-West,” he sud¬ 
denly assured her, in answer to her lifted brows. 

“ By the way,” he went on, “ you’re a deep 
reader of Shakespeare. Why does Hamlet always 
talk nonsense when he is really excited : Art thou 
there, Truepenny ? You know what I mean. A 
very, very pajock. Odd how one is always finding 
out that Shakespeare was a great dramatist.” 

“ Why,” said Barbara, “ have you seen a 
ghost ? ” 

“ A goddess, perhaps,” he hazarded. “ Much 
more serious. What did Nicholas say this morn¬ 
ing ? Diana—in a mackintosh. Actgeon was 
eaten by his hounds.” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


95 


Royden’s passion had come almost to the surface, 
seeking expression in riddles because it did not 
dare to be plain. But Barbara had no time to look 
for a meaning. They were on the point of catching 
Joan and Nicholas at Henry’s. It came, moreover, 
on the heels of so much inconsequence that she 
dismissed it with the rest. 

Alone with Barbara Royden could be conscious 
of nothing else than of the forlorn hope he did not 
dare to essay. The presence of Joan and Nicholas 
eased the tension of his desire, and provided him 
with an amusing distraction. They made an en¬ 
gaging pair. He looked at them with the brutal 
eye of experience. Nicholas was in love with her 
already, but it would take him ages to discover the 
fact, and ages again to act upon it. She liked him, 
and was tinder for any spark. But the blind 
fellow knew nothing of that. He would respect 
her, and she would be flattered—and unsatisfied. 
Secretly she would despise him. Woman invariably 
despised the chivalry that respected them. So 
Royden framed it, as he talked at random, 
pressing upon them, as host, dishes that were all one 
to the absurdly happy Nicholas, and fraught with 
endless novelty and complication for Joan. Barbara 
alone did justice to the meal. 

Then gradually the mood of Royden changed. 
He became continually quieter till, when the time 
came to go to the theatre, he was almost taciturn. 

They sat in a loge, at the back of the house, 
Barbara and Joan in front and the two men in 
attendance close behind. 

For Joan it was yet another strange experience, 


96 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


taking her farther from familiar standards. She 
remembered The Taming of the Shrew , as played 
in excerpts by village amateurs, a pleasant harle¬ 
quinade in the English tradition. To be plunged 
without preparation into the celebrated interpre¬ 
tation of Gemier was a devastating experience. 
She was appalled by the brutality of the conception, 
and her whole being rose against it in revolt. Yet, 
when at last this amazing Petruchio, virile, mocking 
and assured, cautiously approached his Catherine, 
broken with masterful ill-usage, crouching like a 
dangerous wild animal, eyeing askance her keeper, 
in half a mind to spring at him tooth and claw if she 
dared, Joan held her breath in a queer fascination ; 
and when, at last, with infinite caution the man 
began to cajole the woman he had so cruelly mas¬ 
tered, and she lay passive in his arms, hysterical, sub¬ 
missive, bitterly sobbing but strangely comforted, 
she was aware in herself of something that partly 
acknowledged the dreadful truth of the spectacle. 

Royden, in the last of the intervals, took his 
party behind the curtain. He went with Nicholas 
to the actor’s dressing-room, leaving Barbara and 
Joan for a moment in the wings. 

Joan looked about her with the curiosity of a 
child as they waited, wondering at the infinite 
complication of switches, finding an ineffable 
wizardry in the strange devices of the stage, too 
greatly intrigued by her astonishing penetration 
into an unknown world to be disenchanted by 
the painted faces, the nonchalant attitude of the 
players collecting for their cues, the confusing 
disposition of the scenery which seemed as though 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


97 


it could not possibly look right from the front. A 
man in overalls seized the brigadier and knocked up 
the curtain, as Gemier, with Nicholas and Royden, 
came down to the stage. The girls were presented 
to Gemier in whispers. Joan, looking with some awe 
at Fetruchio, found herself shaking hands with 
someone who seemed entirely different, genial but 
preoccupied. Laughter, a ghostly emanation from 
nowhere, came from the auditorium, and the voices 
of the players near at hand seemed strangely unreal 
and declamatory. 

Here was yet another impression of the novelty 
and complexity of life, which pursued her as they 
found their way back to the front of the house, an 
impression that lingered with her as she watched the 
rest of the play. She was no longer one of the 
audience wrapt by a spectacle. Her mind hung 
suspended between the stage, a distant and chang¬ 
ing mirage, and the realities of her brief sojourn in 
the wings. She found herself slipping from every 
foothold that kept her from amid a shifting chaos 
of perceptions. The audience itself was a house of 
puppets, and for a moment she felt that even she 
and her friends, silent and absorbed, w T ere part of 
the same vast and perplexing illusion. It filled her 
with a kind of mental vertigo, resembling the 
nightmare in which one falls giddily through 
illimitable space. She turned instinctively to 
Nicholas, who was watching her from behind. He 
smiled, and she woke to the undoubted reality of 
his presence. He at least was no changing fiction. 
He restored her instantly to the world, and to a 
sure sense of her own identity. 


CHAPTER V 


§ 1 


ICHOLAS next morning at the Luxem¬ 



bourg, found himself confronted with an 


1 ^ international crisis, in which, rather to 

his alarm, he was likely to be closely involved. 
There had come up for consideration an appar¬ 
ently simple solution of a problem which had 
long perplexed the cabinets, and retarded the 
settlement of Eastern Europe. In plotting a 
frontier between two adjacent States on the confines 
of Western civilisation, it was discovered that large 
intractable minorities must necessarily be left 
islanded within the dominions of their secular 
enemies. Undoubtedly these minorities would be 
troublesome to the authorities, and undoubtedly 
they would suffer. For several days the experts 
had been devising elaborate guarantees for their 
protection ; but, when it came to the point, it was 
found that the guarantees were offensive to the 
dignity of the Governments from whom they w r ere 
required, and regarded as wholly illusory by the 
minorities themselves. 

At this point, an ingenious statesman proposed 
that arrangements should be made for these un- 
happy folk to be moved from the territories which 


98 




LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


99 


had been assigned to their hereditary enemies to the 
territories of their friends and cousins across the 
border. The exchange was to be mutual, each 
State receiving its own compatriots in exchange 
for the unwelcome strangers within its gates. 
Immediate recourse was had to Nicholas, who, on 
consulting his tables, was able to show that there 
was roughly an equal quantity of each, and that no 
one was likely to lose or gain by the transaction. 
Already a mutual treaty of inter-migration had 
been drafted, and measures were taken to put the 
scheme into operation. 

It was at this point that Nicholas found himself 
involved in responsibilities unforeseen and incon¬ 
venient. A commission was to be sent to the spot 
to ensure that all should be done decently and in 
order. What was more natural than for Nicholas, 
who had given such valuable advice and informa¬ 
tion on the subject, to be asked by the managers of 
the conference to accompany this commission ? 
It would be his privilege, they said, to assist per¬ 
sonally in the settlement of a problem that had 
baffled many generations ; and, when Nicholas 
demurred, they said it was his duty. In five minutes 
it was settled, and Nicholas found himself committed 
to proceed to the Near East as soon as the necessary 
arrangements had been made. 

Barbara received the rumour of it within an 
hour, and came to his room for confirmation. She 
found him sitting disconsolate among his papers 
in the shadow of Napoleon. He had thought of 
telling Joan of it at once merely as an official 
announcement, but he felt so strongly its personal 


100 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


implications that he preferred to keep his news for 
a more private occasion. Joan, unaware that their 
association was so soon to be dissolved, was busily 
plotting a curve on squared paper. It was a demon¬ 
stration, ocular and final, that with the local 
transport facilities available the migrations could 
be successfully completed within forty-five days. 

44 So they’ve put you on the commission,” 
Barbara began. 

Joan looked up inquiringly, but not before 
Nicholas had signalled impulsively to Barbara not 
to pursue the matter. 

44 When ? ” Barbara inquired. 

“ Early next week, I believe,” said Nicholas. 
44 I’ll tell you about it later.” 

Barbara withdrew, and Nicholas wondered how 
much Joan had inferred. He saw that already she 
had a premonition. Something had happened of 
w r hich Nicholas had said nothing. 

44 What has happened ? ” she asked without pre¬ 
meditation. 

“ They’ve put me on a commission,” said 
Nicholas evasively. 

She continued to look at him questioningly. He 
rose abruptly and went to her table. 

44 It means that I may have to go away very 
shortly.” 

Her dismay was surprising, but she did not let it 
appear. 

“ I shall have to work for somebody else,” she 
complained. 

44 Yes,” said Nicholas, 46 it’s a bit of a bother, 
isn’t it ? ” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


101 


“ Where are you going ? ” she asked. 

“The Balkans,” said Nicholas briefly. 

“ Will you be away for a long time ? 55 

“ Two months, perhaps.” 

There was an awkard pause. 

“ I’ve liked working for you,” Joan said at last. 
“ I shall hate to change.” 

“ I’ve liked it too,” said Nicholas. 

They looked happily at one another for a moment. 

A secretary of legation entered, claiming Nicholas 
for lunch. He was to meet the High Commissioner 
who would be responsible for the proposed migra¬ 
tions. 

Joan felt that the clouds were indeed descending. 
She lunched alone with Barbara, who was not long 
in referring to the impending catastrophe. 

“ It will do him good,” she said judicially. 
“ Nicholas is a perfect dear, but no man has a right 
to be quite such a baby.” 

“ He’s the nicest man I’ve ever met,” Joan 
warmly protested. 

“ I took good care that he should be,” said 
Barbara. 

“ Not like your artist friend,” said Joan. “ I 
never know where I am with Mr. Roy den.” 

“ You don’t like him ? ” 

“ I don’t like him at all.” 

“ He’s supposed to be rather attractive,” said 
Barbara. 

“ I don’t like him,” Joan stubbornly repeated. 

“ Is that because he’s attractive ? ” 

“ That’s absurd,” said Joan, suddenly irritable. 

“ Quite absurd,” Barbara sweetly agreed. “ But 


102 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


it often happens. Some girls are like rabbits with a 
python. They dislike the python, but it doesn’t 
make any difference.” 

“You killed a rabbit once,” said Joan un¬ 
expectedly. “ Mr. Royden told me about it.” 

“ Why did he tell you that ? ” asked Barbara 
sharply. 

“ We were just talking,” said Joan. “ He 
admires you very much,” she added unex¬ 
pectedly. 

“ Indeed,” said Barbara. “ Did he also tell you 
that ? ” 

“ No,” said Joan. 

“ Then, you mustn’t say such things.” 

“ I’m sure of it,” persisted Joan. 

Barbara helped herself to potatoes and wondered. 
Joan was a simpleton, but these exceptionally 
feminine creatures had intuitions which were often 
more trustworthy than the perceptions of a normal 
person. 

Royden, since the failure of his premature attempt 
at fascination, had not given the faintest indication 
that he still aspired. The idea of him nursing a 
secret admiration was new light on an interesting 
subject. For Royden was certainly interesting—a 
man of infinite possibilities, with a brain like a 
knife and a touch of genius which Barbara appre¬ 
ciated for its own sake and which made him 
better worth while than any man of her acquaint¬ 
ance. 

Joan broke suddenly into her reflections. 

“ What are you going to do with me? ” she 
asked. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


103 


“ It’s rather a problem,” said Barbara. “ You 
will have to work with the others.” 

It was an alarming prospect after the com¬ 
paratively sheltered life of a privileged personal 
assistant. She would henceforth be at the service 
of the entire conference, working for a succession of 
strange masters, each with his own little peculiari¬ 
ties of method and temper. She would be one of 
that embarrassing company of competent and 
assured young women, with faculties sharpened by 
months of work at high pressure under all sorts of 
conditions and in all sorts of places and characters 
braced by a life of enterprise and independence. 
As a notorious favourite of Barbara she could 
count on no particular indulgence. In her work she 
was comparatively untried, and outside her work 
she was perpetually at a disadvantage. 

The life, how r ever, had its compensations. Some 
day perhaps a maid unusually quick of eye and with 
the gift to record her impressions will slip into that 
curious circle and show to the world some part 
of the comedy of official greatness seen without 
illusion. 

Barbara had lost no turn or trick of the comedy, 
and in the lively play of young intelligence at the 
expense of elderly pretension no one had in her time 
exercised a livelier wit or rattled a livelier tongue. 
There was no phase of departmental intrigue with 
which she was unfamiliar, no twist of the governing 
mind to which she was a stranger. She knew all the 
gestures and devices of the modern ante-chamber, 
the delicate servilities which were young ambition’s 
ladder, the polite evasions or calculated insolence 


104 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


of those who could afford to scorn the base degrees. 
She had seen how reputations were made and 
broken by smooth official process, and heard the 
smiling gossip in which cabals were framed or 
broken. She knew intimately the system of calm 
repression and amiable prudence which modern 
bureaucracy has substituted for the crude tyranny 
and simple cunning of regal courts, and at every 
turn she had been intrigued to discover old practices, 
anciently abused and abandoned, supreme under a 
new disguise, impenitent and without reproach. 

Barbara was wiser but not sadder for the exper¬ 
ience. She was too equably balanced in her attitude 
to life to be easily cynical. That men and women 
usually pursued the line of most advantage, if they 
had sufficient intelligence to recognise it and suffi¬ 
cient strength of character to be consistent, was no 
very shocking discovery. Happily there were but few 
people clever enough to be invariably prudent, or 
strong enough to remain unmoved by irrelevant 
claims of sentiment or affection. So the world 
remained a tolerably human and kindly place 
outside the councils and corridors where worldly 
careers were made or marred. There was laughter 
outside for the vanity of success and the knaveries 
of successful aspiration. 

For Joan, however, the experience would un¬ 
doubtedly be severe. The finer comedies would pass 
her by, incomprehensible, proceeding on a plane 
where as yet she was a stranger. But she could 
hardly fail to be shocked by the bright irreverence 
of the younger girls, whose eyes were quick to dis¬ 
cover scandal, private and departmental, and whose 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


105 


tongues were equally lively to record it. There 
would be plentiful cold water, and some of it not 
very clean. But cold water was a tonic for healthy 
people, and Barbara felt she would easily be able to 
correct any undue tendency on the part of her 
juniors to discourage or mislead an ingenuous 
recruit. 


§2 

Nicholas was obliged to spend the whole of that 
afternoon at his hotel near the Etoile in the com¬ 
pany of the High Commissioner. 

The interview left him with a strange prevision. 
Realities, hitherto unappreciated, were casting 
premonitory shadows. The High Commissioner 
was the kind of practical and human person who 
sees quickly through the shows of things, and he 
had dropped observations which were far from re¬ 
assuring. He had paid no attention to the charts 
which Nicholas had spread for his information ; 
he did not see the people who were to be trans¬ 
ported as figures on a sheet but as folk with a love 
of home, with possessions precious only to them. 
He had talked of them as folk liable to sickness or 
unwilling to move. He had even mentioned the 
fact that some would be expectant or nursing 
mothers. He had suggested that many would be 
liable to panic and abandon their homes at a 
whisper, that others might prefer to die where they 
had lived, that all would have to be fed, housed, 
and conducted with the utmost tact and precaution. 
He had hinted at hideous possibilities if any blunder 


106 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


were made either from negligence in Paris or malice 
on the spot. He had even estimated the probable 
number of deaths from misadventure or exposure. 

The men and women whom Nicholas had seen 
hitherto as ciphers began to take human shape. 
He began to see the decreed migration as a pro¬ 
cession, alive, tumultuous, with hopes and fears, 
defenceless to cold and hunger and thirst. The 
four walls of the room fell away. He was losing his 
seclusion. 

Mingling with this sense of a world murmuring 
uneasily at the gate was his frequent thought of 
Joan. Here was a reality which had actually 
crossed the threshold. It sweetened his blood and 
destroyed his peace. It filled him with a fever that 
drove him, after the High Commissioner had left, 
to restless pacing. It was as though life were fer¬ 
menting under his eyes,changing its face and quality. 
He was listening, it seemed, for the thin, far sound 
of a small stone that might loosen an avalanche. 

He sat to the table, sweeping his charts to the 
floor and uncovering the MS. of his anthology. He 
had brought it with him to Paris, and had even 
written some portions of his introductory appre¬ 
ciation. 

“ • • • Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe—all 

were for me 

In the kiss of one girl.” 

He had read these lines in London, responding 
as to a lyric phrase. He had felt them to be true as 
poetry ; but he had never considered them as fact. 
The poem was a mood, and not a history. So, in 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


107 


moments of inspiration, a poet had felt about the 
love of men and women. Suppose, however, the 
poet’s utterance were something that held good in 
the personal and particular case. Hitherto Nicholas 
had read his poems of love as splendid hyperbole, 
expressing ideal emotions on a high and general 
plane, sustenance for an abstract passion. He was 
beginning now to feel that they might have a 
practical application. They were true, and he 
realised it now in quite a different way, experi¬ 
encing the quaint surprise of a man who sees for 
himself that some piece of the life he finds about 
him actually corresponds with what he has read or 
heard from others, the idle saying leaping into 
comic truth, or the song becoming incarnate. 

His reflections were interrupted by the low note 
of a siren that shrilled a crescendo and filled the air 
with clamour. He walked to the window. He had 
heard that sound before. It came from the roof of 
a large hotel near the Etoile whence during the war 
the people of Paris were warned of impending raids 
by air, or distant bombardment. The apparatus 
had since been used to warn the public from time 
to time that Europe was at peace. Nicholas re¬ 
membered now. The negotiations had reached a 
successful issue, and, though the conference would 
continue to settle details, there were this evening to 
be banquets and bunting in celebration of its 
success. 

Already the broad street was bright with flags 
and on the faces of the people there were signs that 
Paris intended to seize an unexpected occasion to 
be cheerful. It is a poor public that never rejoices, 

H 


1 


108 LOOKING AFTER JOAN 

especially when pointedly encouraged to do so by 
Parliament and Press. 

He remembered a similar evening, not long ago, 
when the same siren, now vaguely moaning to rest, 
had announced the Treaty of Versailles. He had 
passed through the happy streets to his official 
dinner, the people dancing in rings about his car¬ 
riage. There had been a girl in an Alsatian cap, 
who had thrown him a flower which he had accepted 
with mock gallantry as she dashed off laughing 
with her soldier. Somewhere in a forgotten comer 
of memory that picture had remained, and it came 
forth now provokingly, in the manner of a challenge. 
To-night history would repeat itself. There waited 
for him again the happy streets and the official 
dinner. 

Then, suddenly, Nicholas did something unpre¬ 
meditated and fantastic. He went to the mantel¬ 
piece, where his official invitation rested. Reading 
it carefully, he grasped the telephone, secured an 
official number, and, presenting his compliments to 
the distinguished secretary of someone even more 
distinguished, regretted in plain terms that he was 
prevented by a sudden but slight indisposition from 
attending the exclusive ceremony to which he had 
been invited. 

Five minites afterwards he left the hotel, and 
walked rapidly in the direction of the Luxembourg. 
His way led down the Elysees to the Concorde, and 
thence by the way of the quais and the Boulevard 
St. Michel to the Quartier. The broad avenues were 
gay with fluttering colour, streaming from white 
staves against a background of green trees. It was 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


109 


past five in the afternoon. Already the people had 
set in a stream towards the principal thoroughfares. 
There would be dancing in the streets and already 
the spirit of the dance was in the air. Or, perhaps, 
it was the westering light, radiant on the faces of 
the crowd. Or was it merely an illumination of 
Nicholas himself, putting a brighter colour into 
the streamers, a happier mood upon the people, a 
livelier promise in the air ? 

In the Quartier the festival had a less official note. 
White staves and bunting gave place to hawkers 
with flags, rosettes and such devices as all the 
world over are associated with the rites of Saturn. 
The cafes were thronged, the streets dizzy with 
movement. Nicholas jostled his way up the long 
boulevard, finding relief for the fever that possessed 
him in contact with men and women. 

He turned into a quiet street not far from the 
Senat. The crowd fell away, and he entered at 
once into what by comparison seemed a world 
unnaturally hushed. It reminded him of the 
moment in a circus when the strident band ceases 
just as a performer enters upon his most audacious 
feat. There was an air of crisis and expectancy. 

Thoughts of Joan crowded into that stillness. At 
the end of the street was her hotel. Already he 
saw that her window was open to the air. Was she 
at home ? The window was by turns, as he as¬ 
cended the street, sweet with promise and the 
yawning of an empty shell. Then he caught an 
unmistakable movement, the gleam of an arm 
sweeping back impetuously a cloud of gossamer, 
and he was a boy under the window of his beloved. 


110 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


She saw him over the edge of her mirror as he 
crossed the road. Dead to all forms and shows, 
he called to her by name from the pavement. 

“ The blessed damozel leaned out 
From the gold bar of heaven." 

That also, it seemed, was true. Heaven was behind 
and about her. Thus might she lean for centuries 
while for centuries he looked and listened. 

She talked into the deserted street holding back 
her hair from the sill. 

“ Barbara is here,” she said. 

It was an obscure protest against his air of being 
Romeo under the balcony of Juliet. 

“ What are you doing this evening,” he asked. 

“ Barbara is going to the dinner,” she answered. 
“ She is expecting to go with you.” 

“ I’m sorry,” said Nicholas. 

“ That’s frank at any rate,” said a voice. 

Nicholas found himself under observation from 
the other window. 

“ I’m sorry not to be going with you,” Nicholas 
explained to Barbara. 

“ Who is my rival ? ” asked the voice. 

“ I’m not going at all.” 

“ Isn’t this rather sudden ? ” 

Barbara seemed to be waiting for an explanation. 

He found it difficult. Suddenly he had wanted 
to be part of the life in the streets; to break from the 
official circle ; to sit no longer forlorn in a carriage, 
with life breaking about him ; to fulfil somehow the 
secret process that was beginning to transform the 
world. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


111 


Such an impulse was not easily explained. 

“ I’ve had rather a heavy day,” he said lamely, 
after a pause. 

“ That’s lucky,” said Barbara quaintly. “ Joan, 
too, has had rather a heavy day. And in any case 
she was not, as you know, invited : a very exclusive 
function. I shall find myself below the salt with 
second secretaries and people like that.” 

“ Capital,” said Nicholas. “ Joan can dine 
somewhere quietly with me.” 

“ If she cares,” he added, suddenly realising 
that he was taking Joan for granted. 

He looked up at her, still leaning from the 
window. 

“ I should like it very much,” she said simply. 

“ I’ll wait for you in the porch,” said Nicholas. 
“ Don’t dress up,” he added. “ It will be more 
fun.” 

He waited ten minutes, rising at every noise 
upon the stairs, arrested by every footstep or the 
closing of a door. At last she came, alone, wearing 
a hooded cape that half covered a simple grey 
dress which left bare her throat and the arms 
half-way to the elbow. 

“ Good,” said Nicholas. 

He called a taxi and told the man to drive 
to Prunier’s. Prunier’s would be popular, in¬ 
formal, with lively people and good food. He 
climbed into the cab after Joan with the sensation 
of a schoolboy playing truant. This sensation 
was sharpened as he entered the crowded boulevard 
that ran down to the river. He remembered with 
glee that other occasion. He beheld the decorous 


112 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


assembling of stiff shirts and orders, the pre¬ 
liminary conversations in the ante-room, turning 
upon the latest diplomatic telegrams or stale 
recapitulations of the conference chamber ; the 
grand entry to the banquet; the shuffling in 
search of the card that conferred precedence, or 
registered an inferiority; the first tentative 
approaches towards acquaintance with one’s 
neighbour with its mutual groping for appropriate 
commonplaces ; the discreet loosening of tongues 
that no festal influence would ever betray into 
a genuine audacity; the pertinaciously rapid 
service of many dishes in costly vessels; the 
unbosoming of the worldly in authoritative reminis¬ 
cence and final opinions. 

He knew it all so well, and only to-night did he 
discover that there had always been something 
incongruous in his presence on such occasions. 
The proof of it was sufficiently there beside him. 
Men of the world did not run suddenly away from 
official dinners to worship romantically at an open 
window, to sit entranced beside a blessed damozel 
whose strictly formal object in life was shorthand, 
typewriting, and an orderly system of filing. 
Doubtless, in unofficial hours, they, too, committed 
indiscretions. But romance would never visit 
them in quite that kind of way, or, if it did, it 
certainly would not interfere with their official 
engagements. 

Nicholas had got to this point in his reflections 
when an appropriate confirmation was offered. 
The quais were thronged with people on foot, 
and progress was slow. It w r as half-past seven, 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


113 


and some of the guests were already arriving by 
way of the river at the Hotel de Ville. Caught 
in the throng, his taxi found itself for a moment 
in contact with a stately car. One of the occupants 
recognised Nicholas and whispered to his com¬ 
panion. Nicholas, elaborately disregarding the 
incident, was aware of their faint surprise. He 
was so obviously not dressed, and he was going 
in the wrong direction. He was known for an 
absent-minded fellow. Had he forgotten ? Or 
was there a lady in the case ? One of them bent 
forward to look at Joan, and Nicholas perceived 
from the corner of his eye that faint surprise had 
turned to downright astonishment. 

Definitely he had left the cohorts of the worldly. 

Or was it that he had never really belonged 
to them ? It was true that he had for several 
years been the companion of ministers and the 
counsellor of cabinets; he knew most of the 
successful political men of his time in fully a 
dozen countries; he had just been appointed 
a commissioner to conduct the migrations of a 
people. It would be awkward if, by chance, a 
mistake had been made all these years. Suppose, 
after all, he knew really nothing of public life or 
human nature. Suppose his statistics, like his 
poetry, were symbols of a reality unsuspected 
and not yet discovered. Suppose, like his poetry, 
they were true in ways unexpectedly literal. It 
would be disconcerting to find that for years he 
had been masquerading in a part which he could 
no longer honestly sustain. 

His interview that afternoon with the High 


114 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Commissioner again recurred with its troubling 
suggestion of confused but vital realities lurking 
behind the smooth surface of life. 

§3 

The dinner at Prunier’s was finished. 

Over the coffee cups he looked across at Joan, 
with whom he had lived for the last half-hour in 
a flushed intimacy. The spirit of festival had 
loosened their tongues in frank confessions of 
moods and fears, enthusiasms and antipathies. 
He had boldly sustained the proposition that they 
were quite definitely a pair. She had protested 
that he knew the world, and he had tried to 
explain that he knew only a glittering exterior, 
the heart of which was as mysterious and as un¬ 
accountable to him as to her. She had confessed 
that never before meeting him had she found 
anyone to whom, in confident privacy, she had 
felt able to talk so completely without reserve 
(not even with Barbara). 

“ I seem able to tell you things,” she avowed. 

It was said quite simply, more in surprise at 
the strange facility with which she had exposed 
childish secrets than as wishing to emphasise a 
mutual sympathy. She was, indeed, quite in¬ 
genuously astonished to find herself talking so 
freely. Hitherto nothing had invaded her re¬ 
ticence. From her earliest years she had lived 
cloistered, feeling towards life in a daydream. 
There had been no intrusion into that maiden 
stillness, no confident girl friend to break into her 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


115 


confidence, nothing that remotely resembled a 
love affair. She had kept her mind intact, her 
confidence unforced; and, never had she felt 
an impulse to disclose an inward life hitherto 
inviolate and without a name. It was not like 
Barbara to intrude unsummoned, and she had 
neither pressed Joan for revelations nor imposed 
her own. 

The “ things ” she told to Nicholas were simple 
enough, but issuing from a reserve which had 
scarcely as yet been broken, to her they were an 
unveiling of sanctuaries. In reality, they were 
little more than a confession that she had often 
wondered about life, that she was curious about 
many things, that she was moved by what (to 
her) was beautiful and puzzled by much that was 
taken by others for granted. But Nicholas re¬ 
ceived them as signs of an astounding intimacy. 
He was the first to hear of them. They were part 
of Joan, kept to that hour and unlocked for him. 
She could “ tell him things ”—things that surely 
had been hidden from the foundation of the 
world. He heard them with a sense of initiation. 

But the waiter was at hand. For the last 
quarter of an hour their table had been coveted 
by hungry clients. Nicholas, awakening as from 
a rite, paid the bill. Through the windows came 
distant music and the sound of people singing. 
Already it was dark and the festival was at its 
height. 

They walked to the end of the little street, 
and suddenly the life of the boulevard broke under 
their eyes. An endless stream of people poured 


116 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


gaily past. Some sauntered or watched ; others 
danced along extravagantly in procession en 
travcstie with paper lanterns to humble music of 
their own or in the wake of a band. Challenges 
were flung from group to group and sex to sex, 
which ended frequently in good-humoured scuffling 
or a mimic embrace. They were lost in a sea of 
laughter and movement. The crowd had a life 
of its own, on which the individual was borne 
as on a tide, yielding to the collective impulse 
and standing upon no personal dignity. Men and 
women looked freely in the faces of each other 
and found shining there the spirit that filled them 
all. There was no room in this popular com¬ 
munion for misunderstanding or impertinence. The 
throng was mightier than those who made it up. 

Nicholas and Joan shrank at first from its 
vehemence and crudity. A blend of Arcadia and 
the Bacchic frenzy brought to town and vulgarised 
to the level of the crowd—such was the first 
impression of Nicholas. The impression passed, 
and he found himself affirming silently that, of 
course, it was vulgar. Life itself was vulgar, and 
it was vain to impose upon it a reticence and 
gentility which could never more than thinly 
cover its realities. It was vulgar, but it was 
irresistible. There was a splendour of life in the 
streets that would not be denied. 

Joan was less conscious of its splendour, and 
naturally more sensible of its licence. She was still 
hanging back in recoil when suddenly she was 
swept from the side of Nicholas by a troop that 
was streaming past. He saw her spinning in the 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


117 


crowd, pale and frightened, and before he could 
start in her direction she was lost to view. 

He pursued her violently down the street, but 
suddenly found himself in the centre of a ring of 
girls who danced about him and refused to break 
the circle. He dashed madly at a likely gap only 
to find himself confronted with a laughing face, 
flushed and dishevelled, and his way barred with 
a strong white arm. Somebody said it was a 
shame. He was chasing his little friend. There¬ 
upon the girl who barred his way herself broke 
the ring, flung her arms round his neck, and sank 
her lips into his. 

“ File done” she whispered, giving him a violent 
push. 

Nicholas dashed impetuously forward, his mind 
a blur of impressions through which stabbed a 
sharp anxiety for Joan. The momentary pressure 
of soft lips, of fine hair blown about his face, and 
the firm clasp of a cool arm about his neck— 
these sensations rested on the surface of a con¬ 
sciousness that held in its depth only an increasing 
panic that Joan might be lost. 

At last he saw her. Her hood had been brushed 
back from her head. She held the cloak closely 
about her, and stood rigidly, a look on her face 
that was partly alarm, partly fascination. She 
drew back before the pressure of life, but she, 
nevertheless, acknowledged it. She had been 
looking round for Nicholas, but her attention 
had been caught irresistibly by the people, and 
the fear that assailed her seemed due less to the 
fact that she had lost her companion in a strange 


118 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


city than to her sense of the speed and power of 
the human current that had swept her away. 
Individually she counted for so little in the tumult. 
It was life that she saw, hurrying along its multi¬ 
tudes like straws, and she shrank from an energy 
which paralysed in her the sense of a personal 
identity. It mocked the reserves and inhibitions, 
the peculiar sanctities, that proclaimed her to be 
Joan Weaver, and not merely a girl in the street 
borne on the breast of life by unknown forces 
to unknown ends. 

She met Nicholas with a little sob of relief. 
It was more than comfort at seeing him again, 
almost the sensation of someone drowning to 
whom a rope is thrown. 

“ That was a near thing,” said Nicholas. 

“ You’ll have to take my arm,” said Joan. 

She adjusted her hood and, plunging into the 
stream, they were borne headlong. Literally, 
as in a deeper sense, the crowd was bringing them 
together. After his diffident grasp upon her arm 
had twice been torn away by the wilful jostling 
of rival currents, he quite frankly took her into 
firm possession. Their hands came together, 
twined and rested. He was exquisitely aware 
of the touch of her fingers, as she was thrown 
this way and that, of the weight and rhythm of 
her body as she moved beside him. The vigour 
of the crowd was sap in their veins, and the weight 
of the crowd held them united. 

They beat a passage into calmer waters. The 
pressure was released, and they could at last 
walk comfortably. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


119 


Nicholas looked at Joan, who, flushed and 
breathless, had the air of a swimmer in deep 
waters breaking to the surface. Her hood was 
again in peril, and she pulled gently free of Nicholas 
to adjust it. That she should so casually recover 
her hand at the first opportunity argued her 
unconscious of the enchantment it had brought. 
Nicholas watched her quick fingers as she pushed 
her hair in place under the hood, and then, with 
absurd delight, saw the hand, free once more, 
fall naturally to find his own. The act was almost 
unconscious, as children give their hands to a 
grown companion. 

For an hour they wandered. It was incredible 
that she should come so near. His nerves were 
young, tardily awakened, but fresh as the morning. 
They were sensible not merely of the fingers that 
twined in his, but of each small pulse and slight 
involuntary pressure. He wanted no more than 
that, nor could he yet have thought of a more 
intimate possession. 

They reached the gardens of the Tuileries, 
brought thither by a crowd that caught them by 
the Madeleine and swept them down to the river. 
The night was dark, and the intervals between 
the trees were thronged with a murmuring crowd. 
Nicholas and Joan reached a parapet by the river, 
as a burst of rockets went up from the Champ de 
Mars, inaugurating a festival in the sky. They 
had come from a splendour of life in the streets 
to a strange hush, a multitude that stood darkly, 
looking to the sky, its faces lit at intervals with 
unearthly fires. Now it was a green flare, fading 


120 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


back queerly into the darkness. Now it was a 
fountain of golden fire, falling swiftly to pallor 
and a renewed extinction. In place of the rude 
world of laughter and song, where they had lately 
been borne helplessly upon a common tide, they 
had substituted a world where souls stood apart 
and wondered, each with its lonely response to 
fantastical tricks of light played for a moment 
under the stars. There was a disembodied air 
about the men and women who watched, with 
individual faces, looking almost, it seemed, un¬ 
conscious of their fellows. Nicholas and Joan, 
lately knit together with the crowd, were now 
gazing separately upwards. Though he clasped her 
hand, he was a stranger to her spirit. 

He looked from the sky, blazing with a burst of 
rockets, to the face of Joan. She was steadfast, 
emanent, under the strange light. Her dark eyes, 
more startling than ever in contrast with the 
gleaming pallor of her cheeks, were full of mystery, 
and when darkness returned he felt she was lost 
in some heavenly solitude. 

Involuntarily he pressed closer to her side, to 
be assured of her companionship. She leaned upon 
his arm responsive, and, when the light returned, 
he found that she was looking at him with a friendly 
confidence. It seemed as though she had come 
back from some far region, no longer fey, but a girl 
that smiled, with him, upon an earthly adventure. 

The gardens and streets adjacent thinned rapidly 
after the display, and Nicholas, staying for a while 
with Joan by the quiet river, walked with her 
towards the Quartier. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


121 


Another man would then and there have declared 
his love. But, for Nicholas, the moment sufficed. 
To walk thus intimately with Joan was a revela¬ 
tion, and he could not pass on from this experience 
while it was still so full of wonder and of novel 
implications. It was not in his temperament to 
hasten from miracle to miracle, demanding that 
each should outmarvel its predecessor. It was 
enough that Joan was leaning upon his arm, 
and that he knew her to be happy. 

He chose, for the way home, not the boulevard, 
noisy with a dancing crowd, but the quiet old 
street that ran from the river to the Senat. The 
hour of silent watching in the gardens of the 
Tuileries had changed the mood of their wander¬ 
ing. No longer were they borne together on a 
general tide, helpless under the pressure of human 
forces, universal and indiscriminate. They had 
stood separate and alone under naked stars. 
Still in the shadow of that moment they drew 
quietly together, a nestling of two spirits dis¬ 
mayed before the infinite. For the most part in 
silence they ascended the narrow street. 

At the hotel door Nicholas released her arm, 
and they paused unwilling to separate, but with 
no excuse to stay. 

“ It’s been a w r onderful evening,” said Nicholas. 

He put out his hand to her, and she was already 
there to meet him. 

He took her fingers between his own, bent and 
kissed them, and, in great gladness, left her with 
a quick “ good night.” 


122 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


§4 

Barbara at the official dinner had passed a very 
different evening from Joan. Unexpectedly she 
had found a companion in Hugh Royden, wonder¬ 
ing how he had contrived to secure a place beside 
her at table. She knew the difficulties, having 
been obliged, as one of her many duties, to assist 
in the organisation of the banquet. She was well 
acquainted with the complex problems of pre¬ 
cedence, etiquette, and diplomatic fitness which 
had necessarily to be solved in bringing so dis¬ 
tinguished an assemblage to sit down in that 
particular order without offence to any of the 
national or personal susceptibilities involved. 

Royden was silent and preoccupied. He wanted 
to talk of personal things, to get into touch. Her 
lively malice, evidence that she was heart free, 
ran from him like water falling upon thatch. He 
noted that she was gay, and admitted that she 
was clever, but he brooded apart beyond the reach 
of her wit. He was too much preoccupied with 
Barbara to attend to what she was saying. 

He came at last to attention upon an observation 
which for a moment he did not understand. 

“You oughtn’t to be sitting here,” said 
Barbara. 

“ Oh, that,” said Royden. “ I fixed it with 

H-of the Embassy. He had given me the wife 

of a Minister, and was delighted to make the 
exchange. Apparently there aren’t enough ladies 
of that kind to go round.” 





LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


123 


44 This is a shock,” said Barbara. “ Somehow 
I never thought of you as pulling ropes.” 

“ Heavens ! ” said Royden. “ How do you 
think I get my pictures into the Salon ? ” 

44 They have merits,” Barbara explained. 

“Yes,” agreed Royden. 44 They are nevertheless 
accepted. I shake hands with a French deputy 
every morning before breakfast.” 

44 Then you ought to have stuck to the Minister’s 
lady.” 

44 On the contrary. It would have made my 
deputies jealous.” 

44 Why, Hugh, you know almost as much about 
it as I do ! ” 

44 But that’s elementary. You will find it in 
Gibbon. No Roman officer ever dreamed of 
writing better despatches than his general.” 

44 You preach the true doctrine, but you’re a heretic 
really, or you wouldn’t be wasting your time with 
me.” 

44 I’m not so sure of that,” said Royden. 
44 You’ve a reputation, Barbara. Of course, one 
never knows. Some day, perhaps, I shall have to 
drop you. That’s one of the really difficult things 
—to know exactly when to drop people. There 
are certain decent formalities. Give them three 
fingers in the corridor now and then when no one 
important is looking. It gives one a reputation 
for fidelity.” 

Then, after a pause, he added : 44 Where’s our 
friend Nicholas this evening ? ” 

44 They are wandering about somewhere in Paris,” 
she said. 


i 


124 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ Happy people,” said Royden. 

“ Why not ? ” Barbara challenged. “ It’s the 
best thing that could happen to him.” 

“ I’ve finished the picture,” said Royden. 
“ Perhaps, after dinner, you’d like to see it.” 

“Is it a masterpiece ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Royden. 

“ I’ll come,” said Barbara. 

The dinner drew to an end, Royden pursuing dark 
reflections under the surface of the conversation. 

He thought of Joan and Nicholas, two silly 
children in the streets of Paris, drawing con¬ 
fidently closer, while he sat there with Barbara, 
afraid, for all his experience, to show his feeling. 
Barbara’s interest in those blameless innocents 
aggravated his distemper. It just showed how 
blind she was to the things on which he had 
always relied in women. How else could she 
encourage the mating of a shy recluse with a girl 
Who carried Aphrodite in her veins. She must 
be quite hopelessly insensitive, utterly remote 
from that world of flushed pursuit and nervous 
surrender in which he had hitherto conducted his 
affairs. She saw nothing in Joan beyond the 
possible heroine of a romance of rose water and 
milk, wasting that amazing temperament on a 
diffident philosopher just as she herself was wasting 
herself upon a barren career. 

He had no clue to the passion which at that 
moment was revealing new worlds to Nicholas, 
a passion that had come to maturity in lonely 
reveries, descending timidly from the divine 
abstract to the human particular, using the senses 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 125 

as an instrument and not acknowledging a 
tyranny. 

Barbara, an hour later, fulfilling her promise, 
stood with Royden in his studio, before the easel 
that carried the finished portrait of Joan. It was 
clearly a masterpiece. He showed her a fugitive 
spirit entangled in a net of physical loveliness, 
with the misgiving of defeat in her eyes, doomed 
as from the fall to an irreparable frailty. 

She looked at the picture for a moment, in 
resentful admiration, Royden watching her apart, 
curious how she would express herself, but not 
really in doubt. 

“ I hate that view of women,” she said at last. 

“ I am showing you a picture,” said Royden. 
“ My view of women is neither here nor there.” 

She looked disdainfully at the girl on the canvas 
—or was it with pity ? It was the woman of a 
hundred passionate histories, celebrated by men 
in art and story because she increased their 
dominion. 

Her view of the picture, thought Royden, was 
characteristic, as, indeed, was her presence there, 
alone and fearless, at midnight, with a man who 
was certainly not above suspicion. It had not even 
occurred to her that her visit to the studio was 
unconventional. Scandal could not touch her. 
She carried with her an immunity in which in¬ 
sinuation perished, while any open charge fell 
like a blunted arrow. 

Royden found himself with clenched fingers 
fighting an impulse to declare himself, to throw 
himself upon her where she stood—anything to 


126 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


trouble the serene assurance which so intolerably 
excluded him. He had a vision as of steel, striking 
him swiftly down, a quick figurative glimpse of 
himself as a slain marauder. 

He moved neither foot nor finger, but said, 
seemingly unconcerned : 

“ Please give some credit to the artist.” 

“You don’t really need it,” retorted Barbara. 
“You know that your picture is above that sort 
of criticism from me.” 

“ But it isn’t Joan,” she added quietly. 

“I admire your conviction,” he responded. “But 
your conduct is based on a different assumption.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“As I once before reminded you, your first 
step, on reaching Paris, was to place her under 
suitable protection.” 

“ You see just a little of the truth,” cried 
Barbara. “ You will realise some day that it 
doesn’t take you very far.” 

She laid a hand upon his arm. 

“ Forgive me, Hugh. I don’t mean to be 
personal. But men make me so very angry, and 
the picture is so amazingly good. I suppose that’s 
why I feel it so much.” 

Continually that evening, after he had taken 
Barbara to her hotel, he recurred to the moment 
when he had checked the impulse to declare him¬ 
self. It bit deeper into his vanity than the earlier 
scene, in which he had at least dared to assume 
that she was a woman to be won. 

He had let her go away in ignorance of the 
peril in which she had stood. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


127 


But Barbara, he thought, would have laughed 
at the peril. She would not have been afraid. 
She would have been sorry, perhaps, or possibly 
contemptuous. 

Or was it not just conceivable that she might have 
been a little moved ? Surely no girl could remain 
indifferent to the feeling that shook him. She 
must needs have caught the infection. Perhaps, 
even now, instead of his being there alone and 
humiliated. . . . 

His thoughts broke off in a tumult. 

He rose, and, taking a naked light, approached 
the easel which carried the portrait of Barbara. 
He looked long at the product of his divination, 
and found there no warrant for the flatteries of 
a heated fancy. Not thus could Barbara be won. 
If Barbara should ever give away her heart, 
passion would glorify but not impel the gift. Her 
yielding could never be a submission. 

He passed to the portrait of Joan, and his 
vanity rose suddenly like a hurt snake. Barbara’s 
challenge was still in his mind’s ear; Joan, she 
had said, was not like that. Suppose he were 
to take it up. A seed, dark in the soil, suddenly 
stirred and thrust a pale shoot into the light. 
Barbara was beyond his reach. But there was 
a way in which it was possible at least to confute 
her. 

Royden, as he lifted the lamp to the portrait of 
Joan, remembered that he had always acknow¬ 
ledged her attractive. 


CHAPTER VI 



O N the Friday morning after the festival, 
Royden, calling at an early hour at the 
hotel where Joan and Barbara were 
staying, heard that they had left for a seaside 
town in Normandy. The conference had reached 
a pause in its labours, and the delegations were 
temporarily scattered. Barbara had all at once 
made up her mind to leave Paris for a few days, 
not before she had ascertained that Nicholas 
would be free to join them during the week-end. 

Royden had been drawn to the hotel with no 
clear motive, following a deeper inclination than 
his thoughts admitted. 

It was not till he found that Barbara had 
gone that he measured the force of the attraction 
which had brought him there. He went, if it 
were Barbara, to meet even his discomfiture. 
She was, they told him, at the pension of Madame 
Rougeot at Bruy ere, and the following morning 
found him fantastically early at the railway 
station. He had nothing definite to say to Barbara 
when they met, and he ran the risk of finding 
himself one too many in a chosen company. More 
particularly, he risked intrusion into the circle 
which Barbara, he felt sure, had deliberately 

128 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


129 


drawn round Nicholas and Joan. She had ob¬ 
viously gone to Bruy£re to nurse that promising 
affair, and would want no bad fairy present at 
the vows. She would, in fact, be devoting most 
of her time to secluding her innocents carefully, 
and keeping off the evil eye. That would mean, 
at any rate, that she would be obliged at least to 
give some of her time to him. There was consola¬ 
tion in that. 

He knew well the village to which he was 
bound. It was a favourite resort of Barbara, 
partly for its own sake, and partly for the sake 
of Madame Rougeot, who kept a clean little 
pension by the sea, and liked young people to 
enjoy themselves. She had a pretty white house 
with balconies, and a garden that ran down to 
the shore and lost itself among small dunes where 
couch grass and sea thistles and dry sand, rustling 
in the lightest wind, filled the air with a thin 
music, harmonics of the deeper notes of the surf. 

Barbara would usually slip away for a few days 
with any girls for whom Paris was unhealthy 
when work was slack. There was no town ; only 
a few fishing boats and farms. There were no 
amusements; only bathing and an improvised 
tennis-court, the lugger of Adolf Rougeot for 
those who were enterprising, and a garden which 
tempted the mad English to revive the games of 
their childhood, so clearly was it designed for such 
merry purposes. 

Entirely appropriate for the idyll of Joan and 
Nicholas, Royden reflected ; a small Eden by the 
gea, an Eve who was clearly in the direct line, 


130 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


and an Adam to whom she was as much the first 
woman in the world as though no commonplace 
generations had intervened with vain repetitions. 
Barbara wxmld be there, beneficent and happy 
in her friend. It was an Arcadian world, remote 
from realities, and Royden worked himself into 
a fine scorn with the picture he drew. He had a 
genuine hatred of moonshine. He found the whole 
thing quite sincerely ridiculous. 

He thought of Joan as so obviously a votary of 
easy pleasures, bound to be secretly bored by the 
scruples of her simple admirer. 

Barbara had snubbed him for this conception 
of her friend. But let the amazon beware. There 
was danger in that high tranquillity of hers, so 
galling to him personally and so contemptuous 
of the marauding sex of which he felt himself, 
as it were, the representative. 

He arrived at Bruy£re in the middle of a fine 
morning, and, taking a room with Madame 
Rougeot, walked at once to the dunes by way of 
the garden. Dropping from the low terrace, with 
which it ended, to the sand, that washed up 
everywhere in that country to the foot of the 
green land, he climbed one of the higher mounds 
and looked towards the sea. 

Joan and Nicholas he saw at once coming up out 
of the water. The sea was rough, and Nicholas 
was handing his companion through the breakers. 
Royden turned impatiently from the silly spectacle 
to look for Barbara. He saw her at last far out, 
shown in the flashing of an arm that gleamed 
from the water in quick strokes, 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


131 


The bathing tents were not far from where he 
stood, and Nicholas and Joan were coming towards 
him. 

Joan paused, and seemed to hang back on catch¬ 
ing sight of him. Royden smiled. Instinctively 
she knew him for the serpent in this Eden. He 
waved a greeting to them, and Nicholas shouted 
a friendly answer before they disappeared into the 
tents. 

Royden started towards the sea, where, on the 
edge, he stood and waited. Soon Barbara came 
running over the sand, her dress fluttering. He 
had a sense of swiftness, as though he were looking 
at the winged victory. 

“ Surprised ? ” he asked. 

“ No,” she said after a moment’s consideration. 
“ You almost seem to be one of us.” 

“ Almost,” he complained. 

“ Quite, if you really mean it,” said Barbara. 

There was an ardent friendliness about her. 
But Royden, even as he responded, resented an 
affectation of intimacy that seemed to shut him 
out more completely than the utmost distance she 
could have put between them. That it was 
unintentional made it the more hopeless. She 
stood as ever remote, free to his eyes as to the 
light, but free in a way that declared her almost 
unconscious, certainly quite unmoved, baffling 
him by the frankness which is only possible in 
those whose secrets are inaccessible. 

He waited for her outside her tent lying on the 
sand and looking resentfully to the sea. 

Nicholas came and talked a moment, and then 


132 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


went to the house in search of apples. In a few 
moments Joan also came out. 

“ Nicholas has gone to the house,” said Roy den 
without preface. 

“ Joan,” cried Barbara from the tent, “ he has 
gone for apples. Tell him to be quick.” 

Joan hesitated. She had wanted, when Royden 
spoke, to remain on the shore as a protest against 
the assumption that she must necessarily follow 
Nicholas. Royden, in alluding to their companion¬ 
ship, seemed somehow to make it ridiculous. 

But Barbara appeared, drying the ends of her hair. 

“ Go along, Joan,” she urged. “I’m faint with 
hunger.” 

Joan moved away. 

“ Faint ? ” Royden exclaimed, raising his brows, 
“ I should hardly have said so.” 

She stood in the light wind shaking out her hair, 
ruddy, from the towel. He could not look away. 
To cover his emotion, he said lightly : 

“You are nothing but pictures this morning, 
Barbara.” 

Would he always run from the confession to 
which he was urged ? Was it that he still could 
not risk a check to his vanity, or was it perhaps 
that he would not face the risk of losing her ? 
He could not tell. He only knew that he feared 
to change the expression in those friendly eyes. 
And yet he hated their friendliness. He wanted 
to make himself felt. He could not bear her to 
remain unmoved by his presence, unaffected by 
what he might do. He must prevail with her, 
even though it were to hurt or to embitter. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


133 


“ Talking of pictures,” said Barbara, “ what 
are you going to do with Joan’s ? ” 

“ It was a commission,” said Royden drily. 

44 Will Nicholas like it ? ” 

44 It depends,” said Royden. 44 He certainly 
won’t agree. We shall see whether he is really a 
lover of art, or whether he is merely a lover. I 
insist on the 4 merely,’ ” said Royden. 44 I hope 
you agree.” 

“ They will be very happy,” said Barbara. 

“ See passim our popular serial.” 

“ Our popular serial is not so far astray, or it 
would not be so dear to the commonwealth.” 

44 Are you trying to be common, Barbara ? ” 

44 Why are you so set against my innocents ? ” 

44 4 Innocence ’ is merely negative. It is one of 
the few things we can really afford to lose.” 

“ Epigrams are cheap,” said Barbara scornfully. 

44 So is sentiment,” retorted Royden. 

Royden, as later he followed her into the house, 
wondered why invariably he was moved to argue 
against her. He wanted to meet her naturally, 
to abandon the arrogance of assumed knowledge 
for a frank adventure into the romantic unknown. 
But the habit of years could not at once be broken. 
He must still distrust sentiments which he had 
hitherto quite sincerely despised. 

It would have been different if he had felt that 
Barbara was ready to meet him half-way, but 
no such inference was justified. Suppose at the 
threshold he were met with a smile. If Titania 
were amused or contemptuous he would have put 
on the ass’s head in vain, 


134 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


§2 

The afternoon was warm, lightened by a small 
wind from the sea. Nicholas and Joan, leaving 
their companions to a renewal of the morning’s 
discussion, went for a walk on the foreshore, 
finally coming to rest in a sheltered hollow of the 
dunes where it was possible to bask. 

Joan wore a light frock, and was grateful for 
the warmth. She lay relaxed. Her fair skin 
seeming, as in Royden’s portrait, to absorb the 
sun. 

Nicholas had never recovered the intimacy of 
the night of the festival. He had hesitated to 
presume upon a familiarity which might simply 
have been licensed by the occasion. They had 
merely moved together in a crowd, and he wondered 
whether it had meant anything much for Joan. 

His intelligence doubted it. Yet surely there 
was something between them now, proof against 
the plain sense of the afternoon. For him it was 
a remembered enchantment. For her it was 
something less accomplished, a confiding expecta¬ 
tion. But the elusive thing, which they equally 
shrank from bringing to the test, the intimacy of 
heart and hand which each in a different degree 
acknowledged, was undoubtedly present. It lay 
upon them both. 

He watched the sand running through her 
fingers, and when her hand fell to gather more his 
own dropped to take it. Her fingers lay for a 
moment, and then turned softly into his, 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


135 


“ I’ve often wondered whether it really hap¬ 
pened,” he said. 

“ You mean that night in the streets? ” 

44 Everything. You know that I care for you.” 

44 1 haven’t thought about it,” said Joan. 44 It 
has all seemed so perfectly natural.” 

44 Everything is so terribly confusing,” she con¬ 
tinued. 44 1 have had no time. Things just 
happen, and I feel as though they would go on 
happening.” Nicholas realised the whirl in which 
she had lived for the last few weeks, the confused 
responses necessarily provoked by so many novel 
experiences. She did not, obviously, wish to be 
pressed. Would it really be fair to persuade her 
unduly ? She aroused in him an instinct to protect 
her, even from himself. 

44 You would like to think about it,” he said at 
last. 

44 Give me time,” she pleaded. 44 1 know nothing 
at all. I cannot think at all why you care for me.” 

She looked at him, expectant. His confession, 
halting and incomplete, was so intimately personal. 
She was caught by it softly. It needed only a 
clear call, and she would gladly have abandoned 
all her doubts. 

44 In your own time,” he said. 

Something in her was dashed. She wanted to 
bring him back. 

44 Are you disappointed ? ” she asked. 

She seemed enormously worried, and Nicholas 
put a reassuring hand upon her arm. 

44 1 will come for my answer when you have had 

time.” 


136 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“You are terribly good to me, Nicholas.” 

There was a note now almost of scorn. She felt 
as though she had been positively thwarted, and 
she found herself saying things in obedience to a 
hidden resentment. Why was he so terribly 
scrupulous ? It piqued her to find that his feeling 
for her was not sufficient to overcome his sensitive 
regard for her independence. She was obscurely 
moved by the woman’s inveterate doubt of an 
emotion which checked at the first ambiguous 
refusal and was delicate in its approach. 

Her resentment, wilful but unadmitted, clouded 
their return to the house, after much desultory 
talk with long silences. Nicholas felt the provoca¬ 
tion, but was utterly without a clue. He inter¬ 
preted it, perversely, as the result of his premature 
advance. It seemed, when in sight of the house 
they paused for a last look at the sea, that they 
had been quarrelling between the lines of their 
conversation. She looked steadily away from him, 
and he was struck by something almost sullen in 
her attitude. Was it the augury of her refusal, or 
had he simply puzzled her with a problem with 
which she was not yet able to deal. Perhaps he had 
been too precipitate. 

“ Bothered ? ” he asked suddenly. 

“ Of course not. Why should I be bothered ? ” 

“ It’s a big question.” 

“You leave me plenty of time to think about it.” 

He was staggered by something which was 
almost hostility. 

“You didn’t think it was unfair of me to ask 
you so soon,” he said. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


137 


“ Oh, that,” she exclaimed, dismissing his 
scruples with disdain. 

4 4 1 could not go away without telling you that I 
cared,” he persisted blindly. 

44 Well, you’ve told me, haven’t you. So that’s 
all right.” 

She persisted in that queer reproach that had 
come so strangely. At the same time there was a 
softness that interceded for him, even as she 
hardened. It moved her sensibly to see him 
there, pleading with a mood he did not understand. 
She knew that her resentment was unfair, even 
while she indulged it. Had she not first been drawn 
to him by the qualities that marked him as finely 
remote from the rough world of enterprising males ? 
It was all very puzzling—quite beyond the insight 
of a young girl in the first moments of her first 
acquaintance with a complicated passion to realise 
that it was possible to admire a quality which she 
resented, to demand respect, and, at the same time, 
to rely on its being tactfully ignored. 

They remained a moment ill at ease, and 
then abruptly Joan began to walk to the house. 
Nicholas followed, hurt by her impatient with¬ 
drawal. 

Climbing the garden terrace that hung over the 
dunes, they came upon Barbara and Roy den, who 
had witnessed their arrival from deck chairs under 
the shade of a tamarisk. 

“Hello! folks,” said Royden. “Had a good 
walk ? ” 

44 Excellent,” said Nicholas shortly. 

44 1 want my tea,” said Joan. 


138 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


They passed on, and Royden looked whimsicall 
at Barbara. 

“ Notice anything ? ” he inquired. 

“No,” said Barbara defiantly. “ Did you ? ” 

“ Lots,” said Royden. “ The blessed damozel is 
in far from a heavenly frame of mind.” 

“ Walking on the foreshore is fatiguing.” 

“ I should think it might be—with Nicholas.” 

“ What do you suppose has happened,” asked 
Barbara, moved to the inquiry in spite of herself. 

Royden thought a moment. 

“ Nicholas has told her that he cares. He 
almost certainly said 4 cares.’ It is the sort of 
word he would use.” 

He irritated Barbara by his air of knowing 
exactly what had happened. At the same time, she 
wanted to know his view. She was anxious about 
Joan, and she secretly appreciated the uncanny 
insight of Royden. 

“Tell me what has happened, and I will tell you 
if I agree,” she said. 

“ You won’t agree,” said Royden. 1 

“ Tell me all the same,” she persisted. 

“ Joan was distinctly cross. That must mean 
that he has disappointed her. The rest is obvious.” 

“ Not to me,” said Barbara. 

“ He proposed once. She was doubtful. Perhaps 
she faintly refused. He proposed again. She was 
not quite sure. He insisted, and she was delighted.” 

“But Joan is not delighted.” 

“ From which we infer that Nicholas did not 
insist.” 

“ He probably thought it would not be fair to 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


139 


insist right away. He would naturally want her to 
be quite sure.” 

“ Women,” said Royden, 44 are seldom quite 
sure. That is our business, and it isn’t safe to 
lose the opportunity, especially as there’s usually 
somebody else not very far away.” 

“ Sometimes, Hugh, you frighten me. You know 
too much about some things. I am beginning to 
think that you are really a dangerous person.” 

44 Not to you,” said Royden. 

It was involuntary, as though he were thinking 
aloud. 

His words still lay upon the air as she rose coolly 
from her chair. 

44 1 don’t think so,” she said lightly, without so 
much as turning round. 

He asked himself as he followed her into the 
house exactly how much she intended. He did not 
know, and was unable to guess. 

The result, however, was the same. He had 
received his answer. He might choose between 
deliberate rejection, or a light irony, and each was 
as bitter as its fellow. 


K 


CHAPTER VII 


§1 

S OME dozen members of delegation arrived 
by the evening train. It was a merry party 
that sat down to dinner, and the conversation 
was emancipated. Most of the girls were eager 
to establish that they were free and independent 
spirits, suitable companions for bright young 
diplomatists in search of distraction. To the 
general licence of the period to speak without 
fear or favour, they added the special licence of 
intimate acquaintance. All belonged to a narrow 
circle which had hardly changed during the last 
few years. They had broken with such insular 
domestic conventions as still prevailed in the 
London suburbs, and, being confined to a little 
travelling parish, they flew eagerly to personal 
gossip. 

Joan had hitherto been cut off from her normal 
companions, set apart by the jealous care or, as 
was bitterly whispered, by the open favouritism of 
Barbara. The dinner at which she now assisted 
added a further complexity to life. These aston¬ 
ishing young women discussed with a terrible frank¬ 
ness their bodies, their clothes, their flirtations, the 
habits of their superiors, the rise or decline in 
favour (official or otherwise) of their more attractive 

140 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


141 


colleagues. Everybody claimed to know who went 
with whom, and who was bound sooner or later to 
go too far. Every single standard of feeling or 
behaviour familiar to Joan was disregarded. She 
was lost in a world where all her views of life and 
conduct were fair game for a mockery unques¬ 
tionable and inevitable. Most of it was mere 
bravado, but Joan was unable to see below the 
merely superficial levity of her friends to their 
fundamental propriety. She inferred that she was 
living in a circle where anything might happen 
without censure or retribution. 

After dinner the proceedings degenerated into a 
romp. 

The long garden ran down to the dunes at an 
irregular decline, broken by tamarisk trees, by 
mounds and boulders, by thickets of couch grass 
and sea thistles. It was little more than a portion 
of the dunes trimmed and fenced to the likeness of 
a garden. Here and there flowers and shrubs had 
been induced to grow, but much of it was mere 
wilderness. Down the centre ran a broad, clear 
path, level between the dimpled contours on either 
side. The path dropped over the edge of a wall at 
the foot of the garden, which, as seen from the fore¬ 
shore, was raised upon a terrace. 

It was a garden which for children would have 
been a paradise, and, as the result of liberal draughts 
of the wholesome vin ouvert of Madame Rougeot, 
the company was disposed, if possible, to recap¬ 
ture the careless spirit of an innocence somewhat 
incongruous after the conversation of the dinner 
table. 


142 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ What a garden for cache cache! ” said Barbara, 
taking coffee by the open window. 

“ Why not ? ” asked somebody. 

They organised after dark a complicated varia¬ 
tion of the game, for which the party was divided 
equally into huntsmen and quarry. Nicholas was 
one of the huntsmen, while Barbara and Joan and 
Royden were of the other party. The quarry was 
sent out into the darkness to conceal itself to the 
left of the broad path that ran down the centre of 
the garden. Here, after a while, the huntsmen 
would beat for them, it being understood that any¬ 
one who succeeded in crossing unobserved the path 
where alone there was light enough for recognition 
would be safe from further pursuit and score for 
the party. If anyone were recognised and called 
in crossing, the score was to the other side. 

It was a pastime full of mystery and excitement 
for those who had preserved, or could deceive 
themselves into thinking that they had preserved, 
a spirit of make-believe. 

Joan slipped into the shadow with the rest, 
who scattered quickly in every direction. Soon 
there was no sound in the garden but the occa¬ 
sional rustle of the grass or sand under a wind 
that had fallen and was intermittent. Creeping near 
to the edge of the broad path she hid in a hollow 
edged with tall grass. 

The pursuit was shortly signalled, and Joan, 
thrilling to the game, found that the broad way of 
destruction was watched by at least three hunts¬ 
men. It would need swiftness and luck to cross 
without being recognised, especially as her dress 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


143 


was white. Meanwhile, she could hear the beaters 
moving stealthily, but not far off—or was it a 
companion ? The darkness moved, and she 
crouched. Suddenly there was a faint rustle not 
far from where the darkness had moved, and a 
shadow gliding swiftly towards her hiding-place 
fell at her feet. 

44 Down ! ” it whispered. 

She felt her hand grasped, and knew that her 
companion was trying to obliterate her white dress. 
Two figures broke from a near thicket and passed 
one on each side of their hiding-place. She 
breathed again, and cautiously lifting herself looked 
to see who was her companion. 

44 Saved ! ” he whispered, and she found it was 
Roy den. 

It was not, however, in that ingenuous hour, 
Royden of the mocking smile, but a boy, so it 
seemed, who was conspiring with her to defeat the 
enemy. Disarmed by the spirit of the game, 
covered by the darkness that secluded her with 
that friendly figure, she lost her inveterate nervous¬ 
ness of him. That he had been for her a secret 
source of misgiving added perversely enough to 
the comfort of his presence. It gave to him a 
prestige which increased his value as an ally. 

He bent close and whispered. 

44 You will certainly be recognised if you cross. 
There is nobody else in white. You will have to 
slip over while their attention is elsewhere. I will 
cross high up and whistle as I break cover. Run 
when you hear me. Understand ? ” 

He slipped away, and Joan waited alone. She 


144 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


was taken by something primitive and exciting. 
She felt still the imperious grasp of his hand. 
She lay with her face almost to the ground, the grass 
rustling above her, the shadows of trees just faintly 
darker than the dark, and over everything a velvet 
sky dusted with stars. She seemed in that moment 
to know how the creatures of the field and woods 
felt under the night sky, unvexed with thought, 
conscious only of a beating heart, the small voices 
of nature and the sense of kind. 

She heard a whistle, and, breaking cover, ran 
swiftly across the broad path. Somebody called 
a name, but it was not the name of Royden. He 
had escaped unrecognised. 

“ Idiots,” cried another voice. 61 Stand by your 
posts. Somebody else got over just now.” 

Joan dropped where she had landed after her 
brief run, exhilarated and breathless. 

How lovely the night was, and how cool. She 
felt the stillness of the earth, and the open sky 
graciously rebuked her sighing. Nature was 
sentient, but, though comforting, it was over¬ 
whelming in its immense tranquillity. It had a kind 
indifference that soothed and yet awed her with a 
sense of its peaceful solitudes. 

Again a shadow fell. Royden dropped beside 
her, taking her by the arm and drawing her to 
cover. 

“ Keep close,” he whispered. “ You mustn’t 
let them know who got over. It would make it 
easier for them to detect the others.” 

She could not distinguish the face of her com¬ 
panion. He was rapidly throwing off the mood 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


145 


of the game, to which he had quite genuinely 
surrendered, and was now merely intrigued to 
note how much Joan was disarmed by it. They 
sat with their backs to a mound of sand, looking 
over the top of a group of tamarisks at the 
sky. 

“You are right,” he whispered. “ On a night like 
this it isn’t well to be alone.” 

It was her own thought, formless, but clearly 
defined by this strange man, in a night that was 
full of small voices and airs that came and went 
on mysterious errands, all under the endless plains 
of the sky. 

Involuntarily she drew closer. He was her 
refuge against indifferent power and time that 
slipped endlessly away. Alone she had begun to 
lose her sense of identity. She had almost a 
feeling of disembodiment that left her helpless, 
and a little cold, so that she was glad to find her 
hand in the strong grasp of the man beside her. 
It held her from drifting away like a leaf on the 
small winds that sighed themselves into the 
unknown. 

He was talking now, fitting marvellously into 
her mood, giving reality to her shapeless impres¬ 
sions. 

Then suddenly, on a note that troubled her : 

“You lovely little ghost ! ” he whispered. 

His arm was about her, and she felt it natural 
to be thus. 

“ I know that feeling,” he said. “ I have felt 
it in the mountains ; in big woods it is often a 
horror. Here we feel it just sufficiently to make 


146 LOOKING AFTER JOAN 

us thankful for our bodies that keep us warm and 
familiar.” 

“ I feel,” said Joan, “ as if it would be easy to 
lose oneself, to slip away and not be able to get 
back.” 

“ It would be easier for you to be lost,” said 
Royden. “ You are young. You are hardly yet 
conscious of your coverings.” 

He lifted her arm and put it to his lips. She 
felt his intention and in that instant recovered 
her distrust of him. But it was a distrust that 
held her waiting, as though unable to avoid what 
she feared. 

“No,” she whispered ; “ no, that was not right.” 

“ At least we have laid the ghost,” said Royden 
with a laugh. 

“ It was not right,” she repeated. 

“ You may leave all that to me,” he said 
lightly. 

A figure broke from the further side of the broad 
path, and was recognised by one of the sentinels. 
The huntsmen had evidently beaten the covert 
well, for there was a numerous rush of quarry, 
most of which successfully avoided discovery. 
The game was finished. 

Royden pulled Joan to her feet, and, keeping 
her hand, stood for a moment confronting her. 

“ Why are you afraid ? ” he said. 

“ Let me go,” she pleaded. 

“ Why ? ” 

“You ought not to have done that.” 

He let fall her hands and said : 

“Now you are free, why don’t you go ? ” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


147 


But Joan was unable to move. She had wanted 
to be free, but was unable to use her freedom. 

Roy den took her by the arms. 

“ Hold up your head,” he said imperiously. “ I 
gave you the chance to run, and you didn’t take 
it. You needn’t be ashamed of that.” 

Barbara was heard calling from the house. He 
released her, and she ran before him to the veranda. 

§'2 

She came into the lighted room as from another 
element, back into the familiar. She was almost 
surprised to find things as they were, to see Barbara 
come to her in the usual way, and to find Nicholas 
quietly observing her from a distant chair. 

She wanted to escape. She felt as though she 
were in some obvious disorder, that everyone 
must know that she had been all that time with 
Royden, and that something had happened. 

“ I have a headache,” she pleaded with Barbara. 
“ I think I will go to my room.” 

Barbara was surprised. She glanced from Joan, 
pale, with eyes unusually bright, to Royden who 
was now standing at the window. Royden was 
looking at them both, and it was a look which 
Barbara was afterwards to remember. 

It seemed to Joan that they all must know that 
she and Royden were surprisingly intimate. 

She turned hurriedly to go, and found Nicholas 
at the door. 

“ Good night, Joan,” he said. 

The afternoon came back as she saw him there, 


148 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


anxious for her indisposition, and shadowed by 
their slight estrangement. She gave him her hand, 
and for a moment felt normal and secure. She 
breathed more easily, and the blood flowed again 
to warm her fingers which she wondered to find so 
cold. 

To her surprise, he stepped from the room into 
the hall, shutting the door behind him. He did 
not seem to care who might be watching. 

“ I am leaving to-morrow,” he said. “ I feel 
that I must talk to you again. Come down early 
in the morning, will you ? ” 

“ Of course,” said Joan. She was afraid to let 
her voice take a natural tone. She felt that the 
least thing might betray her. 

They waited a moment. It seemed as though 
something ought to be said, that the feeling between 
them required a gesture for its release. 

But Nicholas merely repeated his good night 
and turned back into the room. 

Again Joan had that sense of defeated expecta¬ 
tion. She went slowly upstairs, feeling as though 
she had been abandoned. 

She did not undress or light her lamp, but lay 
on the bed listening to the voices in the house 
and in the garden. Her thoughts moved without 
method from scene to scene of the life she had led 
through the past few weeks, each of them bringing 
some further novelty. More particularly she was 
haunted by the night of the festival. She was 
again carried by the crowd, or stood in silence 
with Nicholas in the Tuileries , lit from moment 
to moment with artificial fires. Thence she came 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


149 


to the recent hour when she had crouched with 
Royden in the garden, and she fell to compare 
the two men. Each of them understood so much, 
and yet there was nothing similar in their com¬ 
prehension. Nicholas knew her best, but it was 
Royden who had been most intimate. She did not 
desire that intimacy, but she did not seem able 
to prevent it. How, indeed, was she to resist him, 
and on what grounds ? She was powerless to 
meet him in a moral argument. Her standards 
were now chaotic. She had said that it was not 
right for him to make love to her, but right and 
wrong fell in and out of place, bits of coloured 
glass in a kaleidoscope which had changed from 
hour to hour since she had left her mother’s house 
in Meadwell. He had said that she must leave it 
to him. He, at any rate, knew what was usual. 
How could she, new to a strange world, have 
authority to question its conventions ? 

Her emotions were as confused as her conscience. 
Nicholas had said that he loved her. There was 
a sweetness in the memory that, when she lingered 
upon it, was supreme, and set her wondering why 
the remainder of their day together had been so 
disappointing. He loved her, but it was the other 
man who had claimed her. What was this love 
of Nicholas that held aloof, and allowed her to go 
uncherished ? “ You lovely little ghost,” Royden 
had said, and she had thrilled to his passionate 
sense of her beauty. It was the thrill for which 
she had waited in vain on the dunes with Nicholas. 
Nicholas somehow had failed her. His delicacy 
had flouted something in her which, against her 


150 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


will and against her sense of right, was secretly 
flushed and triumphant at the memory of the 
man who had dared. 

The two men were unlike in their appeal, but 
each contributed to her unrest. They were the 
two halves of what should have been one emotion, 
uniting the faith secretly pledged to Nicholas 
with the quickening of her senses, secretly alarmed 
by Roy den. 

It grew late. Steps came and went on the stairs, 
and in the corridors. Lights were extinguished. 

Joan found herself increasingly unable to sleep. 
She rose and went to the window, cooling her hands 
on the window-panes, and pressing them to her 
cheeks. The wind had fallen,and it was now oppres¬ 
sive. She wished for the light airs that had drifted 
about her in the early evening, and wondered now 
that she should ever have been daunted by the 
heartless tranquillity of the sky. She aspired 
towards the remoteness and peace of the garden ; 
her body, which had then seemed a refuge from 
the infinite, was now a burden, and in the tiny room 
which shut her in was almost suffocating. 

She opened the door and looked into the corridor. 
There was no light or sound ; and, slipping quietly 
downstairs, she unfastened the window and went 
into the air. Already she was more at ease. She 
walked to the end of the garden, and, leaving the 
terrace, crossed the dunes to the sea. The small 
breakers made tiny crescents of silver in the dark¬ 
ness, and crept slowly up the beach with little sighs. 

She dropped into a small hollow of the sand and 
rested. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


151 


§ 3 

Royden’s pursuit of Joan in the garden had 
begun as an accident. All that evening he had 
affected a mood of wild spirits which, by the time 
of the absurd game in the dark, had begun to 
impose even on himself. 

Then suddenly he had caught sight of Joan in 
white, exposed to the huntsmen. The rest had been 
a successive yielding to impulses, diverse, but 
thrusting him in the same direction. It was an 
escapade. It was a comprehension of her mood. 
It was the appeal of her physical beauty. It was 
an impulse to play the game of sex which he 
understood so well. It was a sudden pleasure 
in the exercise of an effective pow r er. 

Finally, when he had held her for an instant by 
the arms, it was his revenge on Barbara. In a 
sense it was Barbara that he held, striking at her 
through the weakness of her sex, getting even with 
her for the humiliation his male pride had suffered, 
proving too that she was wrong—wrong about 
Joan and about himself. He was proving in that 
moment that it was not vanity or cynicism which 
prompted him to deny her pretentions. The facts 
w r ere against her, and the laugh, if he cared to claim 
it, was with him. Had he put in one comprehensive 
phrase his uppermost thought at that particular 
instant, he would have said : 

“ At any rate, Barbara, I have you there.” 

He went to his room late, and sat reading for 
an hour. Frequently he forgot to turn the page, 
and found himself brooding on his morning talk 


152 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


with Barbara. He had not made towards her any 
candid approach. Yet die persistently regarded 
himself as one of the rejected. He took her refusal 
for granted. He was like the scalded cat of the 
French proverb that feared cold water. 

There was a movement in the room adjoining. 
Joan, for he knew the room belonged to Joan, 
was also unable to sleep. He heard her at the 
window. In fancy he saw her clearly there, her 
thoughts astray and filled with a restlessness she 
could not understand. She waited within a few 
yards to fill for him the emptiness of the night, and 
to ease the rankling of his pride. 

What should withhold him ? Barbara could 
never be more remote than she had always been. 
As for Nicholas, he deserved to lose the prize he had 
neglected. Nicholas had left her doubtful whether 
she really loved him, piqued by his failure. Un¬ 
doubtedly he deserved to lose her. Besides, 
Nicholas would never know. Joan would marry 
Nicholas eventually, and, if one thing was certain 
in this world, it was that girls, if their emotions 
were discreetly handled, did not tell unnecessary 
tales. 

He put down his book, and, rising from the bed, 
extinguished the lamp. Listening a moment, 
with his hand on the door, he heard a further sound 
in the adjoining room. This was followed by a 
rustling in the corridor that whispered past his 
room to the stairs. A moment later there was a 
movement below, and the unfastening of a window. 
Joan was leaving the house. 

He went to the window, and almost at once a 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


158 


white figure drifted to the veranda, and, after a 
slight pause, descended to the garden. 

She was still wearing her white dress. She had 
not even tried to sleep. 

There was stimulation in this proof of an unrest 
that would not be appeased. It was an added 
lure. 

The white figure disappeared suddenly over the 
edge of the terrace at the foot of the garden. She 
was crossing to the sea, where there might be a 
movement in the air to distract her, and the sound 
of water. 

He came from the window. His hand trembled 
on the door of his room as he shut it carefully 
behind him. He tried to think that what he did 
was in cold blood, cynically planned, and calmly 
executed, but the pretence broke down under a 
strange passion in which Barbara and Joan were 
inextricably associated. 

He stood a moment on the veranda looking down 
the empty garden. The tranquillity of the night 
was powerless over the mood which now possessed 
him. He walked to the terrace, and looked over 
the dunes to the sea. 

He could perceive no white figure against the 
monotonous background of water and sand. He 
looked again more carefully, his keen eyes now 
more accustomed to the low values of the land¬ 
scape. At last, a little to the left, he saw a small 
glimmer of white, motionless and level with the 
sea. 

He approached it softly. 


CHAPTER VIII 


§ 1 



ICHOLAS awoke soon after dawn, and his 
first thought was of the coming meeting 


^1 with Joan. He had found on reflection 
that he could not leave her for weeks in the mood 
of their last conversation. He hoped she would 
come down early, and would be able to give him 
some sign or promise which would justify him in 
trying to recover for a moment the intimacy he 
seemed to have lost. 

He dressed and left the house at sunrise. Already 
there was a lark high above the early clamour of 
the birds. He looked back to the house, and 
identified her room. 

He had thought of passing the night in the 
garden under her window. His emotions were 
sufficiently charged for that. The end of their 
last conversation together had not impaired his 
exaltation ; but had merely added to it a touch of 
romantic sadness, giving it a complexity which 
did not detract from its fullness. The singing at 
his heart had passed into the minor. 

Meanwhile, Joan lay in her room watching the 
light which restored her to the normal world. 

She had been thus for several hours, refusing to 
believe or to understand what had happened, with 


154 




LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


155 


a sense of loss, intense and irreparable. A dozen 
times already she had tried to reconstruct those 
swift events by the sea. She must have been 
sleeping. For, suddenly, he was there. She had 
tried to resist him. She remembered even the 
arguments she had used. Then all at once, in 
passive horror, she had found herself watching as 
from a distance her own incredible defeat. He 
had done as he pleased with her, yet at no time 
had she consented. She had been possessed by 
some alien power. 

She was thinking now as she lay of the rabbit 
Barbara had killed in the laboratory of Royden’s 
friend, but her torment had been more subtle. It 
was her will that had been paralysed. Inert, but 
dreadfully conscious, it had watched her suffrance 
as a woman bound and dumb might watch a child 
walk over the edge of a precipice. It had held 
aloof while she (or could it really have been she ?) 
had become a helpless thing of nerves and 
pulses. 

Then suddenly, too late, the bonds were broken. 
She was no longer helpless, but driving him away. 
He had obeyed, apparently in anger, and for a while 
she had remained alone in a fit of weeping which 
she was unable to control. Finally, aroused by 
the first stir of birds in the garden, she had crept 
back to the house, having exhausted her tears 
and emerged into a strange calm. 

It was from the depths of this spent tranquillity 
that she had become aware of the house on her 
return, already showing white. She saw it with 
new eyes, and in that moment realised that 

L 


156 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


everything was elianged. The elearness of dawn 
on the trees and on the housetop, definite and 
austere, found in her a corresponding clearness of 
spirit. She clung to this as to a consolation, and 
as she lay, waiting for sunrise, invoked it again 
and again as a refuge from memory. 

She recovered it now as, removing her hands from 
her eyes, she faced the increasing light. It put her 
beyond and above the superficial novelties of 
yesterday. These were trifles that had played 
their part. They had loosened her hold on the 
familiar and perplexed her standards, thus contriv¬ 
ing that she should face a supreme moment with 
nothing definite or normal to support her. But 
they did not really touch the reality with which 
she had been overwhelmed. She felt she would 
never again be daunted by the superficial experi¬ 
ences which yesterday had seemed so endless and 
difficult. She had penetrated all such irrelevances. 
She looked back with pity, almost with insolence, 
on the girl who had been so easily overawed with 
strange customs. 

Yesterday she had known nothing of the world. 
She told herself now that she knew everything, 
innocence betrayed running inevitably for comfort 
and justification to a passionate cynicism. In 
compensation for what she had lost, she hugged 
the illusion that now she had completely found 
out the huge imposture of life. She was now a 
woman of the world, who knew men and women 
of the world. 

She thought of Nicholas, measuring the distance 
that was now between them. Yesterday they had 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


157 


stood together in a common simplicity. It had been 
a feature of their peculiar intimacy that they 
had both been somehow “ different.” He cer¬ 
tainly was “ different.” She saw that now with a 
perception of quite another quality than the in¬ 
stinct which had so far served. But now it was a 
difference which divided them. She pondered the 
difference, flattering for her comfort the experience 
she had won, and trying to disdain his simplicity. 

She would be meeting him in the morning— 
early he had said. Perhaps even now he was 
abroad. She rose and went to the mirror, looking 
long at the figure which there confronted her. 
Seeing herself in the light of her preconception, 
she thought that everyone must at once perceive 
that this was not the girl who had left Paris forty- 
eight hours ago. The mouth had caught the 
trick of a novel scorn, and in the eyes was a hard 
security. This, she noted, was a woman of experi¬ 
ence. 

But a stranger would have seen only a young girl, 
struck by the first shaft of the sun—more the face 
of a child who had suffered some small mischance 
than a woman of sorrows, a child that wilfully 
pressed its lips and put a film upon its eyes, but 
was only thereby more manifestly a child. 

She perceived Nicholas standing on the shore, 
looking towards the house, and she shrank from 
the window as though she had been actually visible. 
The movement was instinctive, and followed by a 
quick reaction. She could not avoid the meeting 
she had promised. 

She went down shortly afterwards. She had 


158 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


bathed her eyes and changed her dress, and a few 
minutes in the morning air restored her colour. 

He awaited her in the old friendly way, and for 
just an instant she felt that nothing had changed. 
She was for a moment divided between a convic¬ 
tion that nothing of real consequence had happened 
since last they had met, and an impulse contra¬ 
dictory on the surface, but actually allied, to tell 
him everything, as one would tell of some accident 
without relevance or meaning. But suddenly the 
horror of the night was real again, and, far from 
confessing, she felt that never would she be able 
to find words to convey what had happened. 

She fled for refuge to that new conception of 
herself as one disillusioned and thoroughly aware 
of life and all its aspects, with nothing more to 
learn. Nicholas, for all his years, was a child, and 
she in a sense was responsible for him. She it was 
who must act and decide. It was better to feel 
old and competent, but it would be easier to feel 
like it, if only she were not rather inclined to cry. 

“ It was sweet of you to come,” he began 
eagerly. 

Any word but “ sweet,” she thought, squeezing 
it dry of its irony with a bitterness that was almost 
voluptuous. 

They turned to walk, the level sun throwing 
long shadows before them. 

“I hardly slept,” said Nicholas. “ I should 
have been better last night under your window.” 

She stopped. His exaggerated devotion was like 
the touching of a nerve. 

“ That is not the way to think of me,” she cried. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


159 


He looked at her, surprised by the energy of her 
exclamation. 

“ I am not worthy of it,” she said in answer to 
his astonishment. “ None of us are. Don’t go 
on thinking women are like that. It isn’t true.” 

“ Women ? ” he echoed quaintly. “ Why should 
we talk of women ? ” 

“ We are all pretty much the same,” said Joan. 
She had the air of one who was drawing upon 
centuries of experience. 

She added, irresistibly urged to more natural 
levels : “I am certainly no better than the rest.” 

“ I know what it is,” said Nicholas, brightly. 
“ You have been listening to Royden. He always 
talks as though you were all alike, only some a 
little worse than others.” 

Joan noted that she could still flush at trifles. 
Even the name of Royden was sufficient. 

The morning was very still, the air cool and lying 
fresh upon land and sea. Thin blue threads of smoke 
were standing from the chimneys of a village behind 
the hill, and another lark had risen. They came 
to the spot where they had talked on the previous 
day. 

“ Yes,” said Nicholas, answering her look. “ It 
was here, only yesterday. It seems ages ago.” 

“ Tell me,” he continued. “ Perhaps you 
thought me faint-hearted ? Perhaps you even 
felt I didn’t greatly care ? It was not that. No 
one was ever so dearly loved, but I didn’t think it 
fair to say too much. You are so young, and you 
have had so many unexpected things to think 
about.” 


160 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


They were standing face to face, and she felt 
for the first time the full force of his devotion. 
She saw him at that moment with a peculiar 
intimacy, noting physical details that had hitherto 
merely contributed to her general conception of 
him as a friendly figure. She knew that he was 
deeply moved, and he appeared to her, in a novel 
way, illumined by this emotion. He became for 
her intensely personal, so that his features and 
movements and the sound of his voice were 
significant and dear, because they were inseparably 
his own. With this there flashed into her mind the 
thought: 

“ How he will suffer when he knows.” 

Nicholas, to his dismay, saw tears in her eyes, 
and, before he could wonder how it came about 
they were raining down, not the gradual tears 
that form insensibly, but the pelting storm of a 
hurt baby. For a moment she seemed hardly 
conscious that she was crying. Then she sat 
suddenly beside him in her seat of yesterday, 
brushing the large drops from her cheeks with 
an impatient, almost angry sweep of her 
fingers. 

“It is too bad,” she thought. “ It really is too 
bad,” fitting the irony of things with the phrases 
of a schoolgirl. 

Nicholas was speaking to her, with a hand on 
her shoulder. 

“ What is it ? ” he asked. 

“ Nothing,” she replied. “Please don’t take any 
notice.” 

“ Is it anything I have said ? ” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


161 


“ You ? ” she exclaimed. “ How could it be 
you ? ” 

“ Oh ! please don’t bother,” she went on, 44 I 
am not worth it, really I am not. Besides, you 
will never understand. You are much too good.” 

It was a cry of genuine deprecation for herself, 
and yet there was something in it almost a reproach, 
as though somehow he lacked humanity. 

He reacted violently, taking her almost roughly 
by the wrist. 

44 I won’t have that,” he said sharply. 

She looked at him in amazement. Was this the 
gentle Nicholas ? They stared a moment, almost 
hostile, and before they realised what had hap¬ 
pened, he had taken her in his arms. 

44 Men are all alike ”—such was her first thought, 
struck indignantly dead on the instant, and 
followed at once by the conviction that there was 
no other man in the world like Nicholas. This 
made it the more impossible to realise, let alone 
confess, that an enemy had taken her only a few 
hours previously. 

No : she could not confess, and yet she could 
not accept Nicholas without confessing. For that 
she was too honest. 

“ Let me go,” she pleaded. 44 You must give 
me time to think.” 

44 Think ? ” he said in a low voice, trembling 
from that astonishing embrace. 44 Surely you must 
know.” 

She released herself abruptly. 

44 How are we to know anything ? ” she said 
hurriedly. 44 You don’t really know me at all,” 


162 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


she went on. “ There are things you know nothing 
about.” 

He looked at her in amazement, as nervously 
she darted from phrase to phrase, trying to put 
him off. 

“ Think,” she said again. “ You met me only 
a few weeks ago.” 

“ Is that all ? ” said Nicholas, smiling. 

He would not even be serious. There was a 
long pause. 

“ No,” she said at last. 

“ Then tell me what it is, and I’ll tell you that 
it doesn’t matter.” 

“ It does matter. It matters terribly.” 

She gave an involuntary wringing gesture of the 
hands. 

“ I can’t tell you about it now. You must give 
me time. I will write to you.” 

“ Is it as bad as that ? ” 

44 It will hurt you terribly.” 

44 Joan,” he said, 44 this isn’t fair. You’re 
probably worrying over some trifle. I don’t want 
to know your secrets, but you cannot keep me off 
by being mysterious. You’d better tell me about 
it if you think it matters.” 

Joan rose to her feet. 

44 I would rather end it altogether,” she said 
in a sudden passion. “ If you want my answer 
now, it is 4 No, no , wo.’ I will never marry you, 
never.” 

Her vehemence was amazing, and Nicholas 
looked at her in a kind of woeful surprise. 

The sight of his grieved perplexity was hard to 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


163 


bear, and she desperately sought for courage to 
tell him what had happened. But the mere thought 
of it was intolerable. She could not find a name 
for the creature who, loving Nicholas, had yielded 
to someone else. She could hardly believe in the 
girl who had yielded. It could not really have 
happened. The temptation flashed upon her: 
Was it even necessary to tell ? Why not pretend 
that the incredible thing did not exist ? Nicholas 
would never know, and she could refuse to re¬ 
member. 

The impulse passed. She could not accept 
Nicholas in that way. With him it must be all 
or nothing, and her “ all ” included the event 
which she was not yet brave enough to face. 

Meanwhile Nicholas was waiting. 

“ I will write to you,” she said at last. 

“ Write ? ” he echoed. “ Could there be a 
better time than this ? ” 

She stood still, her eyes half closed, her arms 
rigid, her fingers clenched. She tried again, but 
it was too vile. She could not bring herself to 
say it. It would soil the morning. She could not 
with her own lips profane the idea which Nicholas 
had of her. 

But now it was difficult to retreat. She must 
say something, if only to explain the riddle she 
had made. Inevitably she was driven to suggest 
a half truth in order to save the whole. 

“ Suppose there were someone else,” she said 
in a low voice. 

Nicholas could almost have laughed aloud in 
his relief, except that her manner was so tragic. 


164 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


He thought at once of some boy and girl adven¬ 
ture. He could only see her as a child exaggerating 
a fancied mischief, and there was more than a 
suspicion of indulgent mockery as he asked : 

“ Was it a very desperate affair ? ” 

Joan at this succeeded in being really in¬ 
dignant. 

“Do you think I have been play acting,” she 
exclaimed. “ I tell you it was serious.” 

He was convinced at last, and aware of a vile 
pain which was new to him. He had so far lived 
without having had occasion to be jealous. It 
made him angrily curious and possessive. 

“ Was it just lately,” he asked. 

She nodded. 

“You want time to think about it ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ To ... to choose ? ” 

She looked at him, pausing in her reply. This 
was obviously her way out. 

“ To decide what I am going to do,” she said. 

The vile pain spread like a poison, and yet he 
was incredulous. Could it be possible that she, 
with whom he had wandered in rapture through 
the streets of Paris, whom he had not dared to 
persuade lest he might prevail over her inex¬ 
perience, had all the time been weighing him 
against another, someone, perhaps, who had a 
better right ? 

“ There is someone with a stronger claim ? ” 
he suggested. 

She stood helpless, twisting her hands. 

Her forlorn aspect disarmed his jealousy. With 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 165 

an effort he recovered his sense of her as set above 
worldly frailties and inclinations. 

“ Give me time,” she was pleading. “ Only 
yesterday you were willing to wait. Why have 
you changed ? ” 

He could think of no effective retort to that 
question. The perversity of it staggered him, but 
it was nevertheless unanswerable. That she, who 
within half an hour had twisted like a hare, and 
shown him in succession glimpses of tenderness, 
anger, and humility, all touched with a kind of 
desperation, finally confronting him with an 
unsuspected rival whose claims she must seriously 
consider, should charge him with having changed 
was so unexpected to one who was not accustomed 
to feminine dialectic that he could hardly, in any 
event, have found an immediate response. 

But the charge, though unexpected, was just. 
He had said yesterday that it would be unfair to 
press her. That was even more true to-day if, 
as she said, there was a rival to be weighed. 

“ You are right,” he said with an effort. “ It 
is only fair to wait.” 

He could almost feel the relief with which she 
received his capitulation. It made him angry 
and bitter. Somehow everything had changed 
since yesterday. He had then thought of her as 
a girl to be left sovereign and remote, above the 
grasp of passion and the nets of persuasion, to 
decide deliberately and of her own unprompted 
will. He had wanted her to be free to choose. 
What then was this new desire to prevail against 
her, to keep her at all costs ? Was he simply a 


166 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


hypocrite ? When he had said she was free to 
choose, had he merely intended that she was free 
to choose himself ? 

Vehemently he denied the charge. He had 
spoken in good faith. She was free, and, whatever 
might happen, he prayed that she might be 
blessed in her freedom. 

But it was a prayer from between his teeth. 
Nicholas Fayle was at last suffering from a very 
human emotion. And it was most unpleasant. 


§2 

Barbara was seen suddenly from the house, 
waving a telegram. She came to them over the 
sand, and they met half-way. 

She looked curiously at them as she came, 
noting the strained attitude in which they stood, 
and wondering whether all was well. 

“ News,” she called. “ I must go to London 
to-day. There’s another conference on something 
or other—it’s canals, I think—wants mothering 
somewhere in Holland.” 

Her announcement frightened Nicholas. Joan 
would be quite abandoned, and he was now 
reluctant to leave her alone. 

“ Had a good walk ? ” said Barbara. 

Joan took no notice of this, looking steadily 
away to sea as though interested in a schooner 
gliding imperceptibly to the west. 

“ It’s a fine morning,” said Nicholas after a 
pause. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


167 


“Is that all you have to say ? ” protested 
Barbara. 

“ For the moment, yes,” said Nicholas. 

Joan knew they were covertly thinking of her, 
discussing her, in fact, by inference in her presence 
as though she were a child. 

“ You needn’t worry about me” she said 
suddenly. “ I can look after myself.” 

This was a new development. Barbara, in 
surprise, wondered whether perhaps she had 
been tactless in her match-making. Apparently 
her manoeuvres had been too obvious, and Joan 
resented being hurried into the arms of Nicholas 
without time or ceremony. She had hoped that 
Joan would be safely engaged before Nicholas 
went away. Something, however, had gone wrong, 
and Joan would be left without an anchor. 

Anyhow, there was no remedy. Joan had her 
livelihood to consider. Sooner or later she must 
learn to be independent. 

“ I don’t like leaving you alone,” said Barbara, 
taking Joan by the arm as they turned to the 
house. 

“ I shall do as well that way as any other,” said 
Joan. 

“ Goodness ! ” thought Babrara, “ isn’t it an 
angry child.” 

They arrived at the house, and Joan escaped at 
once to her room, leaving Nicholas and Barbara 
looking a little blankly at one another. 

“ Seems to be a hitch,” she said at last. 

“You must leave it to us,” he said. “ It’s 
only fair to give her time.” 


168 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“I’m not sure that time will be good for her. 
It seems already to be making her rather cross.” 

Nicholas hesitated. 

“You don’t know of anybody else,” he said at 
last. 

“ Of course not. And I wish you hadn’t been 
quite so fair. I don’t at all like leaving her alone, 
in Paris.” 

The clock was heard striking the hour, and 
Nicholas looked at his watch. 

“ My train leaves in twenty minutes,” he said. 
“Do we start together ? ” 

“ I’m afraid not,” said Barbara. “ A kind 
delegate is driving me direct to Dieppe.” 

She ran upstairs, packed in five minutes, and 
went to find out what had become of Joan. 

There was no response to her knock, and the 
door was locked. She heard Joan push back a 
chair, and cross the room. The door opened, and 
Joan stood on the threshold barring the way. 

Joan shut the door behind her and came into 
the passage. 

“ You are going at once ? ” she said, noting 
that Barbara carried her travelling cloak. 

“ In a few minutes,” said Barbara. “You will 
stay here with the other girls, and return to Paris 
to-morrow. For about a week there won’t be very 
much to do. You will be responsible to my 
deputy.” 

All the while Barbara was noticing. Obviously 
Joan was nervous, she had been crying, she did 
not look as if she had slept. 

There was an awkward silence. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


169 


“ What have you been doing to Nicholas ? ” 
Barbara suddenly asked. 

“ I am writing to him,” said Joan. 

“ Writing ? But the man’s downstairs.” 

“ Please leave me to do it in my own way,” said 
Joan. 

She spoke abruptly from nervousness, but 
Barbara attributed her manner to a natural 
impatience of further meddling. It was unlike 
Joan, however ; and Barbara, hurt and vaguely 
uneasy, more than ever regretted the unfortunate 
summons that called her away at such short 
notice. 

A motor horn sounded from the drive. 

“ That is my delegate,” said Barbara. 

She took Joan by the arms. 

“I’m not interfering,” she said. “ Honestly, 
I’m not. But I should like to hope for the best.” 

Joan made no response to this, and Barbara 
gave her a little shake. 

“ I’m going now,” she said. “ Good-bye, and 
my blessing.” 

Joan nearly gave way upon Barbara’s farewell. 
She clung to her a moment, and felt afraid as, an 
instant later, Barbara ran downstairs and was 
lost in the room below. She had a feeling that her 
last support had been withdrawn. She did not 
move till Barbara’s voice, lifted below in farewells 
and last instructions, was drowned by the noise of 
the starting car. 

Nicholas would be the next to go. 

She hurried back to her room, and again sat 
to the task which Barbara had interrupted. She 


170 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


had already written her confession. It lay sealed 
on the table in front of her. She had written it 
with a flying pencil, not pausing to choose her 
words, driven to it by the memory of how she 
had, in effect, deceived Nicholas with ambiguous 
phrases. She had run to her room on the impulse 
to confess, sick with shame at the way in which, 
to save her secret from instant discovery, she had 
turned and twisted, and finally left him with a 
false impression. This hurried note, confronting 
him upon his journey, must do what she feared 
to do in person. The thing she could not name 
stood on the white page, to blot his conception 
of her as he read. But she would not see her dis¬ 
grace in his eyes, or stand for his sentence. 

She took another sheet and wrote as a covering 
note : 


“ Here is the thing I tried to tell you this 
morning. I wanted to tell you, and I really did 
try to tell you. Even now I cannot bear to think 
of you reading what I have written. I beg you 
not to open it at least until you have left Paris. 

I hate to lose your respect. But I almost 
think it would be better for you to hate me, as 
perhaps you will, when you read what I have 
written. 

I do love you, Nicholas, not perhaps in the 

way you wish, but that will be for you to judge 

when you know everything. T „ 

J OAN. 


Time was short. He must even now be due to 
start for the station. She folded the sheet without 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


171 


reading it, and put it into an official envelope 
with its enclosure. Opening her door she could 
hear nothing but a murmur of voices downstairs. 
She descended with a beating heart. It was an 
appreciable moment before she could open the door 
of the room. 

She was greeted by the company, noisily dis¬ 
cussing a programme for the day. Nicholas was 
not there. 

She went to the window and saw a fly was 
waiting. She was on the point of turning back 
into the room when Nicholas entered, followed by 
a servant with his suit case, and made his way to 
the window through a chorus of farewells. 

Beside the window he saw Joan. 

They were in full view, and the man with the 
fly, already impatient, called to the servant with 
the luggage to make haste. 

Joan held out the official envelope. 

“ For me ? ” said Nicholas. 

Joan nodded. She could not trust her voice. 

“ Thank you,” he said. 

He looked at the handwriting, hesitated a 
moment, and put it into his pocket. The man 
with the fly was looking apprehensively at his 
watch. 

“ Good-bye, Joan.” 

Nicholas held out his hand and Joan took it 
uncertainly. It looked as though they might 
disregard the onlookers and come together. They 
seemed completely unconscious of their surround¬ 
ings. Then the station bell was heard clanging 
loudly, and obeying, as men do, the pressure of 


M 


172 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


the trivial, even in moments of great emotion, 
Nicholas climbed into the fly. 

Joan, watching it down the drive, saw Nicholas 
break the envelope she had given him, and read 
her covering note. The fly turned a corner and 
disappeared. For a moment she half expected 
to see him come back, demanding her permission 
to solve at once the riddle with which she had 
dismissed him. 

She felt at that moment that she could let him 
read her confession under her eyes. She w^ould 
even have told him everything herself, there 
under those prying windows, rather than lose him 
in this mechanical way. lie was drifting away 
from her like a somnambulist. If only they had 
been awake, he would never have started thus at 
the ringing of a station bell. 

She was joined after a moment by one of the 
girls among whom she would henceforth have to 
find her companions. It was Winifred Carson, 
more usually known as Freddie, a good-looking 
girl, who, during the last few years, had led the 
livelier members of many delegations in the 
discovery of characteristic diversions in the 
various cities where they had chanced to be 
stationed. 

She looked at Joan sympathetically. 

“ Plenty of fish in the sea,” she said, by way of 
consolation. 

Joan coloured, and was about to snub the in¬ 
trusion. But the other girl was friendly, and 
Joan, instead of snubbing her, found that her 
eyes were filling with tears. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 173 

Her new companion took no notice of this, and 
proposed that they should bathe. 

Meanwhile, Nicholas, pushed into the train, 
was holding in his hand the letter he was not to 
read until he had left Paris. Common sense urged 
him to open it and to have done at once with 
the childish mystification which he was taking 
so seriously. But that would be disregarding the 
wishes of the girl he claimed to adore. How could 
he refuse to respect her first serious petition ? 
Must he admit at the first test that his professions 
were a sham ? 

There was an alternative. He might even now 
return and ask her to open the letter herself. He 
read again her covering note. 

Even now I cannot bear to think of you reading 

what I have written. I beg you not to open it at 

least until you have left Paris . 

The train was stopping at a station. It wasn’t 
too late to return. 

He remembered Joan as she had stood beside 
him on the sand, twisting her fingers. She was 
trying to tell him something. He felt now how 
desperately she had tried. Was he to put her 
again to that ordeal ? And what was this “ thing ” 
to which she alluded ? Most likely it was some 
childish adventure to which in retrospect she 
attached an absurdly excessive importance ; but, 
whatever it might be, was he not bound to let her 
announce it in her own time and way ? 

1 do love you , Nicholas , not perhaps in the way 
you wish —he went over the phrases of the covering 


174 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


note as seriously and as carefully as a scholar, 
interpreting his Horace. 

Meanwhile, the train had started again. 

§3 

Roy den, leaving Joan to her grief, had been 
ill at ease. There was something in her woe that 
was new to him and terribly disquieting. 

He had been prepared for a few tears dropped 
becomingly on the grave of innocence, for the 
hysteria of reaction, for petulant recoil, or even 
downright resentment. He would have understood 
the dismay of a young mind disconcertingly re¬ 
stored to the normal after an essay in strange 
sensations. For any such manifestations he could 
have found a remedy. But there was something 
in the lamentation of Joan which, compounded 
of all these emotions, had a quality which tran¬ 
scended them all. 

He had affronted, it seemed, something which he 
did not fully understand. For him the vestal 
virtues had been always negative. He had even 
despised them as disloyalty to life. But here was 
something he had hurt, positive, undeniable— 
something for which this girl was crying her heart 
out, not for the sake of any mere breach of custom, 
but with a terrible regret which refused to be 
comforted, which put him aside as a clumsy 
intruder. 

Barbara perhaps was right. There were secrets 
he had not grasped. At the thought of Barbara he 
had a moment of veritable panic. If this were his 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


175 


revenge on Barbara, already it was a weapon that 
had turned against him. He had been fond of the 
famous epigram : to the pure all things are impure. 
It had seemed a sufficient defence of his contempt 
for chastity as a commodity prized only because it 
had a social value—the stigma of a virtue that was 
envious and null, a superstition of archaic poets 
and antique saints. The low sound of a crying that 
would never end played havoc with these precon¬ 
ceptions. 

He angrily checked his thoughts. This was 
mental hysteria. Besides, if one insisted upon the 
doctrine of silly mystics, what harm could be done 
to the immortal soul of which they prated by 
accidents merely physical. His thoughts went to 
the picture of Joan which he had painted. He 
could see it before him now, the spirit entangled 
in a net, startled at finding itself subdued to the 
medium through which it must humanly express 
itself, caught in a tissue of nerves and arteries, 
compelled to admit their pleasure and to suffer 
their pain. 

Was it possible to hurt a soul thus held and 
bound ? 

He had started mechanically in the direction of 
the house, but decided on reaching the garden that 
it was useless to think of sleep. He would walk to a 
farther village and return after breakfast. 

His thoughts followed the same circle as he 
walked, except when some changing effect of the 
growing light on the sea, or some surprising trans¬ 
formation of land or sky caught his attention. He 
found himself powerlessly obsessed by the events 


176 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


of the last twelve hours. He comforted his un¬ 
easiness with reasons, only to find that somehow it 
had returned by another door. He searched but could 
find nothing to flatter his insolence. There was, on 
the contrary, a sense of loss, a deep dejection. 

He arrived at the village having, in the disorder 
of his thoughts, walked fast and far. It was now 
high morning and he took a carafe of wine with 
cheese and bread at a cafe. The food and wine 
gave him heart enough to consider what he should 
do. He decided to return to the pension, and take 
the afternoon train to Paris. 

He first caught sight of Joan some two hours 
later (it was almost noon) sitting, a little remote 
from the rest of the company, across his way back 
to the house. It was a bathing party which had 
brought its luncheon to a little cove some two miles 
from Bruyere. Joan was nearer to him than the 
others, and he would encounter her before passing 
to the main company. She sat hugging her knees, 
looking straight in front of her. There was no 
avoiding her, and he was not at all sure that he 
wished to do so. Anything was better than the 
memory of her crying in the dark. 

She was not aware of him until his shadow fell. 
She looked at him a moment, it seemed almost 
without recognition, then away again. 

“ Oh, it is you” she said indifferently. 

Royden had expected her at least to be startled. 
She had always been so terribly aware of him, and 
now more than ever she had reason to be troubled. 
He was even prepared for outcry, or for flight. 
But he had not imagined this indifference. He felt 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


177 


that it was no assumed remoteness, enacted for his 
humiliation, that made his arrival there seem of no 
account. She had somehow got beyond him. He 
did not now exist. She had suffered him. His work 
was done. She could only wonder how and why it 
had happened, and personally he did not matter. 

He looked down at her, sitting as if unaware of 
his presence, looking towards the sea. 

44 Joan,” he began. 

She turned to him in a kind of slow surprise. It 
was as though she were astonished to hear her name 
in the mouth of a stranger. 

He felt compelled to break this terrible in¬ 
difference, which accused him even more than her 
previous distress. Against his will, and contrary to 
the common sense he prized, he found himself 
struck by the pity of it, and wondering what it was 
that he had really done. He could not command 
himself, and was almost surprised to hear his own 
voice, incredibly false : 

44 We’re going to pretend,” it said, 44 that nothing 
has happened.” 

Her eyes rested on him a moment in the manner 
of one receiving a suggestion. Then she looked 
away again with an imperceptible lift of the eye¬ 
brows. 

44 I’ve tried that,” she answered, 44 but it doesn’t 
work.” 

Her mood was unbroken. There was no hint of 
irony, no personal note. She was dispassionate, 
stating a fact. 

44 In a few days,” he pleaded, 44 if you really try, 
you’ll find it difficult to believe that I ever existed.” 


178 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ You ? ” she said. “ I had already forgotten 
you” 

“ It’s curious,” she went on. “I found it difficult 
just now even to remember what you were 
like.” 

He feared increasingly the strange mood in which 
he had found his victim, if this could be called a 
victim that looked steadily away contemplating some 
interior tragedy from which he was excluded. He 
thought with amazement of the preceding day when, 
in the fullness of his pride and knowledge, he had 
ruled her without an effort. She should now be 
prettily downcast and apprehensive. His vanity 
was killed outright. He felt for the first time the 
virtue of humility. 

“It is not you,” the calm young voice went on, 
“ it is what you have done to me. I cannot forget 
that, because I have not yet begun to understand it. 
Sometimes it seems just a silly accident. The next 
minute I feel utterly lost and wretched, as though I 
should never get back. Do you know yourself 
what you have done ? ” 

She again looked at him, and her eyes were 
merely enquiring. 

“ Why not believe what you said just now ? ” he 
asked. “It was an accident, and you must forget 
that it ever happened.” 

He always remembered the moment when her 
eyes changed. He saw suddenly the anguish of a 
soiled spirit. It seemed as though her pain had a 
physical texture, that it was sending forth rays. 
Then her eyelids dropped. 

“ No,” she said. “ It happened to me . It is here 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


179 


now, like an evil taste—something which I hate, 
but which still seems to be me.” 

He stood helpless, uncertain what to say or do. 
For one thing, he knew that it did not matter what 
he said to her. He did not count any longer, except 
as a needless token of her problem. He felt as 
though he had tampered with the unknown, and 
wreaked some disaster of which he would never 
understand the significance. He was a pagan, 
conscious of having offended some unknown god, 
his offence a mystery and his punishment incal¬ 
culable. 

“ What can I do for you ? ” 

It was more an appeal than an offer that he 
made, and he delivered it, knowing that it was 
futile. 

She did not even look at him. 

“ You can leave me,” she said. 44 And please try 
not to see me again.” 

He looked a moment at the quiet figure, still 
sitting as he had found her, and moved obediently 
on to join the group which was lying some twenty 
yards away. 

It greeted him with offers of refreshment and he 
was compelled to sit awhile and exchange some 
necessary conversation. Joan, they told him, was 
moody, and they were tactfully leaving her to 
recover. Naturally she was depressed, having just 
lost all her friends at a blow. Not only Nicholas but 
Barbara had left that morning, and Joan had re¬ 
fused to be comforted. She had even been found in 
tears. She was a dear lamb and not yet used to the 
buffetings of a departmental destiny. 


180 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ The farewells were touching ? ” Royden en¬ 
quired. 

He wanted to know, if possible, how Joan had 
seemed with Nicholas. 

“ We hope and trust,” said the girl, Freddie. 
“ They were up and out before breakfast.” 

He hesitated. 

“ And Barbara ? ” he enquired. “ Isn’t that 
rather sudden ? ” 

“ Telegram from London,” said Freddie. “ She 
left a note for you, by the way.” 

“ Where’s that sweet little word from Barbara ? ” 
she called suddenly. 

“ It was sent to Mr. Royden’s room,” said some¬ 
body. 

He passed to the house, and went upstairs. 
Barbara’s note lay on the table. He fingered it a 
moment uncertainly. He had heard of her departure 
almost with relief. He did not want to meet her 
this morning. He did not even want to read her 
message. 

The note was brief and merry : 

“ Dear Hugh, 

Where are you this morning ? Boots, or 
whatever Frangois calls himself, tells me that 
you haven’t slept in your bed. Very indiscreet 
of Boots, but fortunately I am not curious or 
fond of scandal. 

I have been ordered away to London, and 
Nicholas, as you know, also leaves this morning. 
Give an eye to Joan. She is rather on my,mind. 
There seems to be a hitch, and the infant refuses 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


181 


to have my friendly finger in whatever pie or 
mess they are making between them. I rely on 
you. You think, of course, that the match is 
quite absurd, but please don’t be spiteful. De¬ 
putise for me in as fatherly a spirit as you can 
achieve. Above all, keep her out of the wrong 
sort of mischief in Paris, or I shall come back to 
find her pretty hair in a permanent wave. 

Barbara. 

P.S.—I don’t really dislike you, when I come 
to think about it. On the contrary, I have an 
enormous desire for your improvement. That’s 
rather a bad sign—so they say.” 

He had never had so friendly a letter from 
Barbara. It made her accessible. The postcript 
had almost the air of an invitation to explore 
the possibilities of a more intimate companionship. 

As a proof of her liking, warmer than anything 
she had hitherto admitted, she asked him to give 
an eye to Joan. 


CHAPTER IX 



S HORTLY after seven o’clock on the follow¬ 
ing evening Nicholas was pacing one of the 
platforms of the Gare de Lyon. 

Already the long trains were forming. In no place 
may so many pleasant legends be read at the same 
hour as under the echoing glass of the P.L.M. 
between seven and nine. There one begins to feel a 
citizen of the world. To cross the channel is merely 
to enter France, to exchange one kind of insularity 
for another. But to enter the Gare de Lyon is to 
level the Alps, and to reach beyond the Carpathians. 
Milan, Venice, Buckarest, Constantinople, are at 
once accessible. Frontiers are named, only to be 
crossed in fancy—Modane, Vallorbe, Domodossola, 
each with its peculiar thrill. One is in presence of 
far cities, wide plains, high forests, great mountains, 
and to-morrow one may wake to the first cypress 
pointing a thin black finger to the sky against a 
ground of grey olive. 

Nicholas, awaiting the arrival of the High 
Commissioner, could not, for all his preoccupation, 
remain insensible to the appeal of this romantic 
terminus. On the contrary, he found that the 
appeal was enhanced by his present anxiety and 
excitement. It was not only that he had yet to 

182 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


183 


read the confession of Joan which lay unopened in 
his pocket book. He had a premonition that this 
expedition was destined in some conclusive fashion 
to test, and perhaps to modify his general attitude 
to life. Already he was aware of a change in the 
familiar scene—a change similiar to that which had 
sent him wandering through the Paris streets on the 
night of an official dinner. He felt as though he had 
never really seen these things before. He had looked 
upon them always from the cool vantage of an 
amateur, viewing the world in comfort, with half a 
dozen languages in his head, letters of credit in his 
pocket, and adequate introductions wherever he 
might go. 

To-night, as the long trains filled and waited, his 
interest was caught and held by a group which had 
just invaded a third-class carriage, bound for the 
Italian frontier. This was really an adventure. 
There was an old woman with her sons and daughters 
and with one of the daughters was the young hus¬ 
band she had married that day, and the husband’s 
brother. They had wine and bread, and a mando¬ 
line. Nicholas had heard all about them, because, 
knowing Italian, he had helped them to explain 
that they needed rugs and pillows. They would sit 
up the livelong night as the train pounded towards 
the South. The dimly lit carriage, with its exiguous 
pads of brown leather would be gay with music and 
talk, with the married pair happy in a corner. In 
the morning they would descend somewhere in the 
land which knew them, having made what was 
indeed a journey. Meanwhile Nicholas would be 
drowsily accusing fate which had given him a 


184 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


• compartment over the wheels, which, as all seasoned 
travellers of the protected classes know, is the 
height of discomfort. In the morning he would sit 
over maps and schedules with the High Com¬ 
missioner, crossing frontiers that meant little or 
nothing to this cosmopolitan man of many lan¬ 
guages, and studying a frontier that meant even less 
—that far border between hereditary enemies which 
he had helped to trace in red ink scarcely a week 
ago, which, nevertheless, had been traced (he 
remembered it now with misgiving) for several 
centuries in the red blood of its warders. 

What sort of journey was this odd two thousand 
miles, a pilgrimage of which the stations were the 
hours of lunching or dining, and of which the 
principal interests were heating, ventilation, and 
a good mattress, while he played intermittently 
with the lives and destinies of thousands of people 
whom he had never seen ? 

Well might he feel uneasily remote from life, 
as he watched the veritable pilgrims who hung 
from the windows of their dingy carriages, and 
heard the medley of advice, expostulation, con¬ 
jecture, and comment of those who started and 
of those who stayed behind. 

Suddenly the High Commissioner was seen 
passing the barrier, surrounded at once by friendly 
officials. He was well known in all the European 
railway stations, having spent the greater portion 
of the last two years in travelling from capital to 
capital. 

As usual, he was travelling alone. His staff 
consisted mainly of volunteers scattered over the 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


185 


face of Europe, wherever there might be migration, 
exile, famine, or disease. 

He was a cheerful apparition, bringing to the 
enterprise a conviction of reality. Nicholas tried 
to remember all he had heard of him, and there 
was a great deal, for the man had become almost 
a legend. He was a dreamer, but a dreamer with 
a will and a capacity to make some of his dreams 
come true. Physically he was a man of stature. 
He carried in his face an almost uncouth energy, 
given by an immense thrust of the jaw, and 
hollows which seemed to be worn by years of effort 
and resolution. But mostly he lived in his eyes, 
which still after more than thirty years of seeing 
the world had the look of an explorer for whom 
all things were new and astonishing. Nothing 
could be more intensely candid, a look open as 
air with just a hint of speculation. 

He spoke to the governments of Europe as a 
man in earnest, who invariably wanted something 
done that was necessary and humane, and assumed 
that everyone concerned would be honestly anxious 
to help him. In energetic progress from capital 
to capital he was in the habit of convening round 
the same table friends and enemies, compelling 
them to agree by virtue of an appeal which knew 
no frontiers. The diplomatists and politicians 
brought into contact with him on these occasions 
experienced internally the painful shock which 
assails the wise and prudent when truth is uttered 
regardless of expediency. Usually he left them 
bruised and shattered, endeavouring to mend the 
gaps torn in their formulae, and realising in wonder 


186 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


that somehow they had been induced to co-operate 
for the welfare of mankind. He had wonderfully 
been spared the disillusions of maturity, having 
preserved not only the energy but the faith of 
youth. Life was still an enterprise, in which all 
men were comrades, and there could be no room 
for disloyalty or misgiving. This assumption 
had survived a hundred disappointments and an 
intimate acquaintance with all the intricate ways 
of European policy. Like Nicholas, he would 
continually be learning with astonishment that 
men were not invariably honest. 

At dinner, as the train settled into its rhythm, 
he talked on general topics. Every now and then 
Nicholas found, almost with apprehension, that 
a deadly blue eye was intently fixed upon him. 
Happily there was a fundamental sympathy 
between them not only in a cordial agreement on 
the merits of Euripides and Thomas Hardy, but 
in a mutual recognition that each of them had 
the scholar’s outlook and disposition. 

Nicholas felt that he was going to work for this 
man as he had never worked before, but with this 
conviction was blended an uneasy feeling that 
nothing he had hitherto learnt or achieved was 
going to be of any very great service to him in 
the enterprise. 

This feeling became almost a certainty, as they 
sat later over maps and papers. 

“ For this job,” said the High Commissioner 
unexpectedly, “ I would rather have a man who 
understands Euripides than a man who under¬ 
stands politics. I could never understand politics 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


187 


myself. ^They rely on me, in fact, to ignore the 
political difficulties. It is rather like Shakespeare,” 
he concluded suddenly. 

The High Commissioner had a way of seeming 
wildly irrelevant. Nicholas waited. 

“The experts quarrel for generations over some 
obscure point in the text which has never worried 
the ordinary reader. We are really going to deal 
with things that are terribly simple.” 

“For example ? ” 

“ Hunger, exposure, exile, the fear of death ”— 
the High Commissioner paused a moment, his eyes 
seemed to be looking hard at the things he named. 

“ But surely,” objected Nicholas, “ this is merely 
a question of housing and transport ? ” 

He indicated the charts which he had spread on 
the table. 

“ Very interesting,” said the High Commissioner. 
“ I will have another look at them some day— 
when we get back to Paris, if you still think that 
it matters.” 

“ But really,” faltered Nicholas, “ you must 
surely believe in our solution. You said nothing 
at the conference, and you accepted its mandate.” 

“ I never say anything at a conference. It 
wouldn’t be of any use. I accept its decisions, 
and do my best to reduce the inevitable human 
misery to a minimum. In this case we may be 
able to do something. Our first job will be to 
stop the panic. My agents are already working 
at that.” 

“ Why should there be a panic ? ” 

“ In that part of the world it is the custom on 

N 


188 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


annexing territory to drive the population into the 
interior, where they cease to be of interest to the 
civilised world.” 

“ Yes,” said Nicholas, “ I can show you the 
statistics.” 

“ I have seen the thing itself,” said the High 
Commissioner. 

“‘ But this is emigration subject to guarantees,” 
Nicholas objected. 

“ I do not think we will try to explain that to 
the natives,” said the High Commissioner drily. 
“ It will be as much as we can do to persuade them 
that they are not going to be murdered in five 
minutes. You will be useful for that. I haven’t 
many men who can talk to them in their own 
language. Only in the next forty-eight hours you 
must somehow get it into your head that you are 
going to a country which is rather like the Scottish 
Highlands in the tenth century. Meanwhile, my 
men are buying corn, and I have secured some 
tents and some wooden huts, and I have persuaded 
a number of charitable societies to collect clothing 
and blankets. The Red Cross are also getting to 
work. We shall pick them up probably at Sofia.” 

Nicholas looked at the charts that lay heaped 
between them. They had become very unreal 
and remote. He had for years dealt with the facts 
to which allusion had been made. He knew the 
history, and could quote the figures. Now for 
the first time his knowledge was taking life and 
shape. The big man opposite had seen with his 
own eyes events which for Nicholas had merely 
given a larger sweep to a red curve upon white 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


189 


paper. The dry bones stirred, and there was 
almost a horror in the expectation that soon they 
would be erect and moving. 

He found that the expedition had entirely lost 
its unreality. For half an hour, in discussing plans 
of relief with the High Commissioner, he even forgot 
the sealed envelope on which his mind had been 
working since his departure from Bruyere. 

§2 

He returned to his compartment late and went 
to bed. He lay in the darkness listening to the 
steady pulse of the train, reflecting, now that 
he was alone, on Joan and her parting riddle. 
He had decided not to open her letter till he was 
over the frontier, but suddenly he was astonished 
that he had left it so long. He even wondered 
why he had not insisted at Bruyere upon an 
immediate solution. His talk with the High 
Commissioner had somehow dwarfed the scruples 
which had hitherto seemed so important. He had 
been living in too tenuous an air, refining upon 
emotions which he had kept unnaturally secluded 
and away from the sun. 

He switched on the light, and, almost before he 
knew, he had broken the seal of the letter which 
lay under his pillow, and was reading it: 

“ Bruyere, 

Monday morning. 

A most dreadful thing has happened. I tried 

to tell you this morning, but somehow I couldn’t. 


190 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


It all 5 took place last night on the beach. He 
came to me there, and I did not send him away. 
Only it was much worse than that, Nicholas. 
I can’t think what possessed me, and I don’t 
know how to put it into words, but I let him 
have everything he wanted. Do you under¬ 
stand what I mean ? I could go mad when I 
look back on it now. I have always hated him, 
and now I hate myself. I feel utterly ashamed 
and miserable, and I can’t bear to think of you 
reading this, but I feel that you must know 
the whole truth at once, no matter what differ¬ 
ence it makes to us afterwards. It would be 
dreadful for you to go on thinking me perfect 
while all the time I am no longer worthy of your 
love at all.” 

For a moment he could not understand. He 
was being carried senselessly in a train that 
swayed and pounded. A sudden shriek of the 
engine tore his ears and in the comparative silence 
that followed he realised that his pulses were 
beating loudly. All was confused uproar and 
misery, in which nothing was connected or clear. 
Things came and went without reason in a chaos 
of their own. 

He was aware, at last, of his senses, awakened 
and insulted. He had never deliberately thought 
of Joan in that way. He was now forced to think 
of her in physical submission to another. The 
idea obsessed him. He had an infamous curiosity 
for explanations and details. 

But there were other things. There was, even 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


191 


in these first moments, a sense of the pity of it— 
that child who was asking still what had happened 
—caught before she was aware. Under what 
compulsion had she suffered ? He had a swift 
vision of a white figure struggling by the sea. 
The sweat came to his forehead, and the heart 
hammered in his breast. 

Why had he not insisted that afternoon at 
Bruy^re ? She had wanted him to claim her in 
the ordinary human way. He had refrained, and 
another had defrauded him. 

Why had she allowed it ? He could not under¬ 
stand. It was utterly incredible. He could not 
see Joan in the light of it at all. This was an utterly 
new world in which he was completely lost. He 
would never believe the thing she had written. 
There must be some mistake. 

He read it again, and again there was that 
dreadful clamour of heart and brain. The letter 
was crushed between his fingers. He saw her 
now too well—surrendered, responsive. He would 
lose all control if he thought of it. Yet there were 
things he must know. Who, for example, was the 
man ? He must know that. It would help him 
to get it all quite clear. 

But God forbid that it should ever be clear ! 
He could not bear to see or to understand. She 
had been possessed as by sorcery. Let him leave 
it at that—impersonal, abstract, not requiring him 
to think of Joan and another, but of a blind force, 
beyond inclination or will, usurping her spirit 
and suspending her faculties. 

Was this the crude stuff of which the poets 


J92 LOOKING AFTER JOAN 

made their songs, crude stuff without order or 
reason ? 

A refrain sang suddenly : 

“ Weave, hands angelical— 

Flesh to pall our Viola." 

That was Joan as she had lived in his brain for the 
last few weeks, her flesh of heavenly tissue, lucent 
with spirit, for him an enchantment, to be touched 
as down on the wings of a butterfly. Where now 
was the reality of that exalted song ? Was it 
the mere favour and prettiness of a sheltered 
muse, wilfully shut from a world in which Joan 
had been grossly delivered to a man she did not 
love ? 

“7 have always hated him and now I hate myself .” 
Where was an issue from the evil riddle in which 
a soul was thus divided, accepting, perhaps pro¬ 
voking, its own defeat, embracing what it loathed ? 

He took paper and wrote. He loved her. He 
loved her even more urgently. 

But nothing clear or coherent would come. 
His letter reflected the muddled misery of his 
thoughts, going about endlessly from tenderness 
to curiosity, from desire to doubt. On the same 
page he wrote that he understood everything, and 
that he would never understand. He wrote that 
he trusted and adored her, and thought of her as 
quite untouched, but he went on to question, 
to exhort, to implore. All was confusion ; he 
could say nothing that was honest or clear. The 
blow was too unexpected and too recent. It 
revealed too much. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


193 


There could no longer be the old way of loving. 
There would have to be something more material, 
and yet it must achieve a deeper spiritual under¬ 
standing. It would have to comprehend Joan 
who had yielded to a man she hated together with 
that other Joan who, somehow, he was sure, still 
stood remote and was inviolate. 

He must wait for something that went beyond 
the romantic worship of an innocence brought 
down from heaven, and it needed time for its 
discovery. He prayed that the revelation might 
come quickly. 

It was a prayer shaken and torn with suffering, 
renewed again and again as the night advanced. 

He made several efforts to seal her a letter that 
night and on the nights which followed, but he 
was unable to govern his pen sufficiently. The 
page too faithfully reflected the pain and bewilder¬ 
ment of his thoughts which, as yet, defied coherence 
or any intelligible cry. 

Meanwhile, reality was closing about him after 
another fashion. He had crossed the last of the 
frontiers that lay between him and the work he 
had been called to do. 


CHAPTER X 



I T was little more than a fortnight since 
Nicholas had left Paris, and Barbara, now at 
the Hague, had not yet returned. 

Joan was standing before her looking-glass in 
the pleasant room which she had shared with 
Barbara, as on the evening when Nicholas for the 
first time had come to take her to dinner. The 
communicating door was open, and again a con¬ 
versation was in progress ; but this time in place 
of Barbara, it was Freddie who replied. 

Freddie had fallen frankly in love with Joan, 
and Joan was in the mood to respond to affection. 
She could say with Lear that, being in grief, a 
straw might lead her. She was quite willing to 
be adored by Freddie, and to accept her philosophy. 

Freddie’s philosophy was on the surface simple. 
She was an attractive girl who liked fun, and who 
held that it was the duty and privilege of the 
young men who surrounded her to supply her 
with that commodity. She varied their reward 
as the occasion required, careful always to give 
them no more than was necessary, and, being 
a clever girl, never finding it necessary to give 
them very much. She had lived the international 
life for several years, and had successfully flouted 

194 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


195 


the conventions of several countries. She had 
danced publicly in Barcelona, and in Washington, 
she had referred disrespectfully to the United 
States. 

Barbara, who before she left had seen signs of 
Freddie’s incipient liking for Joan, had upon 
reflection decided that it was rather a good thing. 
Freddie was known to be jealous of her friends, 
and on most occasions could be relied upon to 
look closely after a new companion. She was 
better for Joan than a merely dull girl, and less 
dangerous than anyone else of an equal gaiety. 

Joan was trying very hard to be gay. She 
nursed continually that new conception of herself 
as one who now knew the world, and could play 
disdainfully with its follies. She looked from 
a summit upon mankind, and pitied the weak¬ 
nesses of women. When men looked at her in 
a restaurant or at the play, she told herself that 
they were all alike, and suspected them of infamous 
intentions. She revelled darkly in the general 
depravity of things. This, she told herself, was 
no ordinary happy girl who could be deceived 
by appearances, but a woman of the centuries 
who saw through the glittering pageant to the 
sad realities beneath. 

At night when alone, and beginning to wonder 
why Nicholas did not write, it was another matter. 
She then felt very young and inexperienced. She 
hated those lonely moments, and was the more 
readily disposed to follow Freddie into adventures 
that brought her back to the hotel sufficiently late 
and sufficiently tired to make it possible for her 


196 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


to sleep immediately. Sitting in some bright 
cabaret with a suitable companion, she could 
recover the mood which made it possible to 
capture that blessed superiority to life and its 
snares, which was the pose of her self-preservation. 
She had only to light a cigarette or to powder her 
nose, and at once she became a woman of the world 
confronted, as such women should be, with salted 
almonds and a champagne cooler, attended by 
emulous young men inspired, of course, with the 
worst of motives, and richly deserving to be 
snubbed. 

She invoked physical aids in the attempt to 
capture this illusion. Superficially, it was now a 
different Joan that looked back at her from the 
mirror. She imitated Freddie in all things, spend¬ 
ing much time with the coiffeur and purchasing 
unwisely of his wares. The flaxen hair of her 
innocence rose from the brow in a postiche elabor¬ 
ately waved. Among the minor horrors per¬ 
petrated in a similar spirit, were cheeks unskilfully 
treated, and lips immoderately touched with the 
stick. Even the eyes were changed, their owner 
having put into them by virtue of much concen ¬ 
tration the hard film of a calculated insolence. 

She looked toward Freddie, whom she could 
see from the communicating door. 

“ Who is it to-night ? ” she called. 

“ Two of them,” said Freddie. 

“ But who ? ” persisted Joan. 

“ Just men,” said Freddie. “ Why distinguish ? ” 

“ As a matter of fact,” she went on, “ I have 
got you rather a nice one, He is a Croat,” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


197 


“ I am glad of that,” said Joan, remembering 
Nicholas, and trying to feel sarcastic. “ I have 
often wondered what they were like.” 

“ He’s got a shocking reputation,” said Freddie. 
“ But he is really quite harmless—with a weak¬ 
ness for taxis. They go to his head, and he becomes 
affectionate. But he is quite easy to manage 
really, so don’t be rough with him. I scolded him 
rather severely the other night, and the poor 
man burst into tears.” 

There was hooting beneath the window. The 
Croat, with Freddie’s companion, had arrived in 
a taxi. 

A moment later Joan was introduced to a little 
dark man, who addressed her in perfect French, and 
hoped she felt as charming as she looked. It was a 
Balkan diplomatist, in all respects perfectly normal 
down to the legion of honour which he wore in his 
buttonhole. 

Joan was disappointed. She had hoped that at 
least he would wear a turban. 

He waved another taxi to the pavement. Freddie 
gave Joan a look, which was almost a wink, as 
with her friend she entered the taxi which was 
already there. 

Joan, driving through Paris with her diplomatist, 
was a very different spectacle from the Joan who 
had driven that way with Nicholas a few weeks 
previously. Then she had been open to every 
impression. Life had played with her as the wind 
with her light hair, and her spirit had floated with 
the scarf which had fallen across the sleeve of 
Nicholas, She sat now as though stiffly posed for a 


198 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


photograph, a cloak held about her throat with a 
fashionable clutch of the hand, her hair crinkled to 
defy AColus himself, her face composed to a modish 
languor—an excellent imitation of Freddie, but 
Freddie did it with a twinkle. 

They dined at Henry’s, a ritual to which Joan was 
now accustomed, and in the course of which she 
gave a series of excellent imitations : imitation of a 
great lady for whom elaborate service was in¬ 
evitable ; imitation of a connoisseur disposing of a 
cocktail; imitation of a spiteful cat commenting on 
the frocks and figures of the company ; imitation 
of a worldly woman exploiting her charms ; imita¬ 
tion of a girl who had nothing to learn. 

Meanwhile, somewhere within and beneath all 
this was a Joan even more lost than in the days 
when Paris was altogether new to her, a Joan which 
knew at heart that this bright surface was a sham 
and its affected cynicism as childish as the in¬ 
genuous curiosity which it had displaced. It was a 
Joan swiftly suppressed if it should intrude, but of 
which it was not always easy to dispose. It had, in 
any case, only to await its hour when there was no 
bright setting for one of its numerous imitations. 
Then it would come inexorably to the surface to 
wonder still what it was that had happened to her 
on a certain night in Bruy ere. 

Joan of the bright surface, disposed that evening 
to be hysterical, was determined that Joan of the 
night watches should not be suffered to intrude, 
though the Croat should summon a hundred taxis, 
and though it should be necessary to make him cry. 

Freddie, in fact, began shortly to have misgivings, 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 199 

Her friend was so unexpectedly bettering her in¬ 
struction. 

It began at the Cirque Medrano, where Joan 
insisted on the Croat inviting the clowns to a 
magnum. 

It was a quaint group : the poor painted fellows 
inclined to suspect that they were mocked, but 
grateful for the champagne, and conscientiously 
trying to be funny in return ; Freddie disposed to 
think it was rather hard on the Croat; Freddie’s 
companion openly apprehensive that he might 
suddenly be asked to feed the seals with caviar ; 
and Joan playing the hostess with a pretty con¬ 
descension. 

It was on the whole one of her best imitations. 
She touched glasses with them all, and when they 
turned up their eyes in mock admiration and 
smacked their lips in an ecstasy not wholly feigned, 
she dropped them a curtsey, smiling upon the jokes, 
which, fortunately, she did not understand. 

They supped and went to a fashionable place for 
dancing, highly recommended by members of a 
South American delegation. 

Freddie’s companion feared the worst, and was 
justified. 

There are places in Paris where the exploitation 
of foreigners is reduced to a science. The addresses 
change with a bewildering rapidity, but everything 
else remains the same. Even Joan’s imitation of a 
worldly woman fell short, and Freddie wondered 
secretly whether the Croat would stand for it. 

He stood it for half an hour. Apparently he 
would do anything for Joan. 


200 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Every five minutes a waiter would significantly 
lift the bottle from the champagne cooler to see 
whether anything remained. He would fill glasses 
that were not yet empty, and he brought the wine 
list as soon as the bottle did not permit of the 
former operation. 

Freddie’s companion estimated that on two 
bottles a determined fellow who was not afraid of 
waiters might possibly be able to keep a table for 
twenty minutes. They did not tell you to go, but 
there were a hundred insinuating ways of suggesting 
that as soon as you ceased to order things or to dis¬ 
tribute largesse, your presence was no longer either 
a profit or a pleasure. Meanwhile there was always 
the grand manoeuvre. This consisted in bringing in 
more tables till the space for dancing was reduced 
to the size of a pocket handkerchief. The dancers 
then departed elsewhere, and new comers could 
again be received on the threshold with salted 
almonds and a carte des vins. The grand manoeuvre, 
however, was seldom necessary. The fear of a 
waiter’s contempt is for most men more effective 
than the fear of God. 

Joan, slightly dizzy with wine, and dancing 
occasionally without great skill in a small space, 
watched it all with a growing assumption of pleasant 
ease, but with a secret melancholy. There were 
moments when the whole scene had the character 
of a dream. The restless waiters with their dazzling 
black and white, the couples turning and swaying 
in the middle of the room, the mechanical rhythm 
of the band, and the perpetual roar of conversation 
were a drifting background for isolated visions : 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


201 


the idiot mask of a man, the sweat standing on his 
forehead like artificial beads, staring fixedly over the 
shoulder of his partner ; the red fist of another 
grasping manicured fingers, and holding a white arm 
rigidly in the air ; the professional smile of a woman 
mouthing at her companion as she piloted him 
warily among the dancers ; the sudden flash of the 
real bacchante abandoned to the rhythm of the 
music ; the studied droop of a girl’s hand across the 
black coat of her cavalier, trailing a flower. 

Joan, ineffably mundane to the outward eye, 
suddenly felt that unless she did something soon 
she would probably faint or burst into tears. She 
suggested a dance. The Croat led her forth, and the 
issue was unfortunate. She first accused him of 
holding her in the wrong way. This gave time for 
the next couple to cannon violently into the middle 
of her back, and a moment later, having mis¬ 
managed her feet, the Croat was only just able to 
prevent himself from being brought heavily to the 
ground. Meanwhile, they had circled the room, 
and arrived back at their table. 

She pulled sharply away from her partner, red 
with vexation. 

“ He is trying to kill me,” she explained to 
Freddie. 

“ Anyhow,” said Freddie’s companion, “ I am 
tired of this place, and the waiter is just going to 
discover that we have emptied the third bottle.” 

Outside there was almost a scene. Two taxis 
were called, and Freddie said it was time to go home. 

“ Home ! ” said Joan in high derision, 44 why, 
it is not yet two o’clock. 


202 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ Anyhow, I am broke,” said Freddie’s com¬ 
panion. “ It will barely run to a cab and a chope 
at the Noctambule.” 

The Croat fixed his soft brown eyes on Joan. 
“There is a place just behind the Palais Royal,” 
he began. 

“ No, you don’t,” said Freddie. 

“ I shall do as I please,” said Joan. “ Anyhow, 
I am not going home.” 

“ Don’t be absurd, Joan. The party is over.” 

Joan turned to the Croat, disdainfully interroga¬ 
tive. 

“ Is this the end of the party ? ” she enquired. 

The Croat was understood to say that he would be 
most happy to remain at her disposal. 

Freddie was divided between temper which 
prompted her to abandon Joan and a sense of duty. 
Temper won the day, especially as she was quite 
sure that Joan would follow at once in a panic if 
she were really abandoned. 

“ Home,” she said shortly to her companion. 
They absconded, and Joan found herself on the 
pavement alone with the dark little man with the 
soft eyes, of whose speech she understood scarcely 
a word in twenty. She passed immediately from 
lofty disdain to a secret panic as the tail of Freddie’s 
taxi disappeared round the corner. The narrow 
street was very still. It climbed steeply towards 
the summit of Montmartre. Buildings, tall or 
squat, threw shadows under a young moon. Oppo¬ 
site her was the side of a house whose neighbour 
had been torn down, supported with huge baulks 
of timber. The moon shone on the wall, which was 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


203 


a patchwork of decaying wallpaper and faded 
distempers, crossed w r ith the black shadows of the 
wooden buttresses. 

There was something almost indecent in this 
exposure of the entrails of a human habitation, 
ghastly under the moon. A little way up the 
street an illuminated sign winked the word 
“ hotel ” with a dull insinuating persistence. 
There was a sly malevolence in that mechanical 
intimation of hospitality by night. 

Joan shivered and turned, almost as though for 
protection, to her companion. He smiled, and, 
holding the door of the taxi, gave an address to the 
driver. 

They crossed a deserted Paris, whose people had 
long since retired, leaving their streets to the foreign 
invader and to those who ministered to his uncouth 
pleasures. 

Joan had never imagined it was possible to feel 
so terribly alone. It was far lonelier to pass 
through these endlessly shuttered streets, and under 
thousands of dark windows behind which it seemed 
impossible that there could be sentient human 
beings, than to be alone in the little village of 
Meadwell or in the country. It gave her the feeling 
that she would never see people again, but would 
drive for ever through a dead city with lamps 
meaninglessly lit for no human purpose that could 
be ascertained. 

She glanced across at her companion. The 
lamps gleamed at intervals upon his face. He sat 
silent, his soft eyes resting on Joan with an irritating 
fixity. They were like the eyes of a cat for whom 
o 


204 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


one prepares a saucer of milk. She almost expected 
him to purr. 

The taxi stopped with a jerk before a narrow 
door, over which a lantern, sham antique, flickered 
in a warm draught that came from below. Joan, 
longing now for Freddie, wondered into what vile 
alley of the night she had come. A door opened 
suddenly at the bottom of the stone steps, and a 
cheerful rhythm was heard for a moment before 
it closed. A faultless member of the British 
delegation known to Joan by sight and reputation 
came into the street. He looked at Joan in passing 
and, noting who was with her, shook his head 
dubiously as he watched them descend into the 
cabaret. 

For Joan it was an immense relief to find safety 
at the foot of the stairs. The waiter, with the 
usual wine list, seemed almost a homely figure 
after those silent streets. Her spirits rose fan¬ 
tastically in reaction. 

“ I like this place,” she said. 

The Croat was understood to say that he was glad 
she liked it. 

Already it was half-past two, but the cabaret 
was still full. They were people who had come 
from the opera or some fashionable play, and 
having supped were not yet disposed to go home. 
The brilliant dresses of the women, and the formal 
clothes of the men made a strange contrast with 
the place and its deliberately rustic appointments. 
One thought of Prospers cellar in 1788. It was the 
kind of place that suddenly leaps into fashion and 
is forgotten in six months, a disused vault, prettily 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


205 


decorated in a style affectedly rude, rather like the 
stage wineshop of romantic drama. 

A lively orchestra, led by a virtuoso who played 
an enormous dulcimer, fronted Joan where she sat. 
Behind the orchestra in a half moon sat the gypsies 
who had made the cabaret famous. 

Soon, explained the Croat, they would be singing 
their native songs, and every foot and head would 
be moving to irresistible rhythms. 

Already the inevitable champagne had been 
enforced. Joan complained of hunger, and the 
Croat, with eyes that grew softer as the night wore 
on, had the pleasure of feeding her with eggs and 
ham and mustard. 

The gypsies were singing now their wild, sad 
songs in an unknown tongue, bringing to civilised 
ears music with which peasants over half a conti¬ 
nent are cheered and lifted a moment from the soil. 

Joan finished her meal, whose simplicity was as 
carefully calculated as the appointments of the 
cabaret, and she leant back to enjoy the music. 
It took her fron the world of make-believe, in¬ 
habited by Croats with soft brown eyes, and placed 
her in that other world to which she must inevitably 
return when the night was ended, and when there 
was no more occasion to pretend. 

The singers sat gravely without movement or 
gesture, except for the slight poise and jerk of the 
head with which they flung their accents into the 
air. There was a strange defiance even in their 
gaiety, as though it were a protest against the 
cruelty of life. 

Joan felt she was in presence of a spirit that 




206 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


sang bravely under sullen skies, with enemies close 
at hand. It piped to her secret distress, till even 
her sadness stirred, and she felt that it might per¬ 
haps be better to suffer than to become insensible. 

It was at this moment she found that someone 
was looking at her, a man who sat solitary under 
one of the arches. 

She bent forward to identify him, and saw that 
it was Royden. 

§ 2 

Royden had spent most of his time since his 
return from Bruy ere wondering just how far he 
had been mistaken in Barbara. Precisely how 
much did her friendly letter imply ? Perhaps she 
had quite literally meant what she had said that 
afternoon by the sea, which was the one hypothesis 
that had not occurred to him at the time. She 
had said she did not think he was dangerous He 
had taken it for irony or rejection, because these 
were the things he feared, but, taken literally, the 
phrase implied a doubt, suggesting that she had 
begun to wonder. 

He had read her letter a hundred times. There 
was hope in it: distinctly he felt the provocation. 
His pride rose, and something finer than his pride, 
till he came to the phrase which bade him give an 
eye to Joan. He tried to read it as a satirist, 
smiling at the blindness which prompted that 
ingenuous recommendation, and at the comic 
irony which selected just him to receive it, but the 
attempt failed. She wrote to him as a friend, 
confiding to him a trust which he had already 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


207 


betrayed. She could never, if once she heard of 
it, forgive so complete a treachery, even though it 
had preceded the obligation she had imposed on 
him. 

Destiny had played him a shabby trick, but he 
could yet be even with his stars by cancelling the 
event which stood between him and felicity. Joan 
would say nothing, and, once she had married 
Nicholas, would soon forget that she had stumbled. 

Give an eye to Joan. Should he even now in 
good faith take up the trust ? 

Joan was virtually alone in Paris, and he had 
seen enough of her mood on the morning of his 
departure from Bruyere to realise that it was not 
good for her to be alone. She might drift, or she 
might run wild in sheer affectation. He laughed 
at himself in the part of a friendly guardian. That 
were a farce too utterly fantastical. 

But there at last she was, met by chance in this 
cabaret at an hour when Barbara would be thinking 
of her, if at all, as safely asleep in her room. He 
watched her some time before she saw him. 
Characteristically, his first reaction was aesthetical. 
What would Barbara say to that little horror 
with the crinkled hair ? He had seen nothing like 
it except at bad moments in the windows of an 
English tobacconist. It was worse than anything 
he had imagined, except possibly the fellow who 
was with her, watching her with his soft eyes, 
and plying her with champagne. Already she 
had drunk more of that inevitable vintage than 
was either kind or proper. 

He had laughed at himself in the part of guardian, 


208 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


and yet that strangely enough was how he felt at 
that moment. 

He waited for her recognition with a kind of 
curiosity. This again surprised his expectation. 
She stiffened into a modish insolence, and, after a 
brief stare, looked away. It was the snub direct, 
magnificent, if it had not been so terribly pathetic. 
This was equally true of the attitudes that followed : 
elaborate nonchalance, relieved by ostentatious 
kindness to her companion, whom suddenly she 
began to notice for the first time, sending him 
rapidly to heaven, and giving to his eyes the appear¬ 
ance of brown sugar preparing to dissolve. 

Royden divined at once that this was no veritable 
descensus averno . It was aimed, he perceived, directly 
at him, an instinctive vengeance intended to show 
him his handiwork, to provoke regret, and, at the 
same time, to demonstrate that this was no longer 
the foolish girl with whom he had played in the 
garden at Bruy ere, but a practised woman of the 
world, as much at home as he in that place of 
mundane diversion. He read every gesture of 
that sad performance, wondering that he should 
see so much of the comedy of life and yet have 
been so entirely blind to its deeper emotional 
implications. 

Her companion was now beckoning for the bill. 
Royden quietly intercepted the waiter, and settled 
with him first. Then leaving the cabaret, he 
engaged one of the long line of taxis before the 
door, and waited himself at the corner of the 
street. In a few minutes Joan came daintily out, 
and drove away with her companion. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


209 


Royden at once entered his taxi. 

“ Follow that cab,” he said to the driver. 
“ Fifty francs if you don’t lose sight of it.” 

So the farce, after all, was to be played. Here 
he was, enacting providence in the place of Bar¬ 
bara, and playing it with the best of motives. He 
had no feeling in the matter except that this was 
a girl amazingly innocent (he insisted curiously on 
that), who had drunk too much champagne and 
was driving to an unknown destination in Paris, 
not, as he observed at once, to her own hotel. 

He watched the tail light of the taxi in front, 
wondering whether Joan was still playing her 
comedy now that she no longer had an audience. 
More likely she was simply tired or frightened. 
He pictured her sitting indifferently back, again 
ignoring her companion, as in the restaurant 
before she had found it necessary to pretend. He 
could imagine the fellow with his deliquescent 
eyes, looking at her and wondering how she would 
take it. 

For, of course, she had no idea that she was 
driving to an unknown address. She had not 
come to that, nor should she, if Royden could 
help it. 

He leant forward, excited by the chase, but fell 
back almost with a groan, in desperation at the 
futility of his action. He had begun to regard 
himself as about to achieve a rescue, but for that 
it was a little late. If Providence had meant to 
act, it should more properly have intervened at 
Bruy£re. 

Nevertheless, this thing should not go on. He 


210 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


would not allow his bad work to be completed 
even though he had to lock her up till Barbara 
returned. Give an eye to Joan: apparently it 
was the only possible thing to do. 

The taxi in front drew to the pavement in a 
small side street. 

“ Slowly,” Roy den called to his driver. 

The Croat emerged suddenly, and said some¬ 
thing to Joan. She followed, and saw at a glance 
high above her a dull sign winking the word 
“ hotel,” like that other one in the narrow 
thoroughfare of Montmartre. She hardly knew 
in her terror what happened next. But suddenly 
there was another taxi by the pavement, and 
somebody stood between her and the man who 
had dared to bring her to that place. 

She heard a voice saying : 

“ Pardon, Monsieur, mais vous vous etes 
trompe de l’hotel.” 

In another moment, as she swayed a little 
dizzily in the cold air, she felt a strong grasp on 
her arm, which almost lifted her into the taxi 
that had so opportunely arrived. 

§3 

Joan woke next morning with a vile headache, 
and for a moment had some difficulty in remember¬ 
ing just what had happened. More particularly 
those last moments in the cab with Royden were 
difficult to recover. They were so utterly in¬ 
credible. He had been peremptory, reassuring, 
and strangely dependable, driving her straight 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


211 


back to her hotel without inquiry or explanation. 
The man who had been secretly a threat, and 
afterwards a disaster, had suddenly become a 
refuge. His voice heard on the pavement of that 
unfamiliar street had filled her with an immediate 
relief. Undoubtedly it had been a rescue. 

She shuddered in contemplation of possibilities 
which had all the sinister prestige of the unknown. 
The sordid little street, with its winking sign, 
had in memory an abominable suggestiveness like 
the squat mountains which, chin on hand, had 
witnessed the arrival of Rolande before the Dark 
Tower. But her deliverer came, the knight-errant 
of innocence waylaid. She had known at once that 
it was all right. 

Such were the thoughts that came while yet the 
scene retained its power to frighten her, while 
yet she could feel the relief of her immediate 
delivery. But it was difficult to remain under 
these influences, with the sun streaming into her 
cheerful little room, winking from the china of 
her dressing-table, and moving upon the latticed 
roses of the wall as the breeze fluttered the curtains. 
Outside were the bright noises of the street. This 
was Paris, a civilised city where a girl was well 
able to look after herself. She had never been in 
any real danger. She had only needed to request 
that horrid little man to take her home at once, 
and all would have ended reasonably. She would, 
in fact, rather have liked to give him a bit of her 
mind. She might even have made him cry, which 
would have been a capital story for Freddie. Come 
to think of it, Royden had been somewhat officious. 


212 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


By the time she had rung for her breakfast 
Joan was almost resenting the interference of 
Royden, and by the time she had taken her coffee 
with fifteen grains of asperin, she was fully ap¬ 
preciating the fact that he was the last sort of 
person fit to rescue damsels, and was attributing 
to him the worst possible motives. Did he assume 
a right to supervise her conduct ? On mature 
reflection—and thanks to her fifteen grains she 
was soon feeling terribly mature—she decided that 
Royden had acted from a proprietary instinct 
which it would be a duty and a pleasure to resent 
on the first possible occasion ; and when, a few 
moments later, Freddie appeared in the doorway, 
she would have derided the imputation that she 
had ever been frightened in her life. 

“ Well,” said Freddie from the door, “ what 
happened to you ? ” 

“ No more Croats, if you please,” said Joan. 

“ Really,” said Freddie, preparing to be in 
terested. “ Was he very dreadful ? ” 

“ He tried,” Joan languidly responded. 

“ No ! ” said Freddie increduously. “ Tell me 
what happened.” 

“ He wanted to take me to one of those hotel 
places,” said Joan. 

“ The little beast,” exclaimed Freddie. 

“ I don’t suppose he is any worse than the 
others,” said Joan. 

But Freddie was genuinely indignant. Also she 
thought with some uneasiness of her desertion, and 
what Barbara would say, if she knew. 

“ Men really are the limit,” she exploded. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 213 

“ I shan’t let you out of my sight again in a 
hurry.” 

“ I am quite well able to look after myself,” said 
Joan. 

“ I hope you gave it him pretty plain,” said 
Freddie. 

Joan was silent. From her expression, it would 
be inferred that she had given it him very plain 
indeed. 

“ What did you say to him ? ” insisted Freddie. 

“Not much,” Joan airily replied. 

Freddie, sitting on the bed, waited patiently, 
and was rewarded. Joan suddenly felt it necessary 
to be frank. 

“ The fact is,” said Joan, “ there were two of 
them.” 

“Two ?” 

“ We went to a cabaret, an awfully jolly place 
underground, with gypsies. Somebody I know 
was there, and he followed us afterwards, at least 
I suppose he followed us, for he turned up just in 
front of that hotel place.” 

“ I see,” said Freddie, “ it was a rescue.” 

“ Pooh ! ” said Joan, “ I just went off with the 
other man.” 

“ And he brought you back.” 

“ You bet he did.” 

“ Anybody I know ? ” asked Freddie. 

“ We all know him more or less,” Joan answered. 

“You are very tantalising,” grumbled Freddie. 

“ Well, it was Hugh Royden,” said Joan. 

Freddie looked at her enviously. 

“ You have all the luck,” she complained. “ I 


214 LOOKING AFTER JOAN 

should simply love to be rescued by Hugh 
Royden.” 

“ I think he is perfectly hateful,” said Joan, 
polishing her nails. 

“ Anyhow,” protested Freddie, “ he is a bit 
of a change. I am sick of our travelling 
menagerie.” 

“ He is original,” Joan admitted. 

“ And quite good looking,” said Freddie. 

“ He’s got a bad mouth,” said Joan. 

“ But he’s frightfully clever,” asserted Freddie. 
“ He always seems to know exactly what you are 
thinking about. He caught me the other day 
looking at that Venus in the Palais. ‘ Yes,’ he 
said, ‘ she is rather a dear, isn’t she, but you can 
give her at least three inches round the waist.’ It 
gave me quite a start. I was just thinking she was 
about my figure when he came along.” 

“ Disgusting,” said Joan. 

“ I don’t agree,” said Freddie in the manner of 
one who deals with a grave problem. “ You see 
he is an artist, and artists have a different way of 
looking at things. What did he say to you last 
night ? ” 

“ I was much too sleepy to listen,” said Joan. 

“You are perfectly inhuman,” said Freddie, 
rising from the bed. “You ought to be jolly grate¬ 
ful to Mr. Royden. If it hadn’t been for him, you 
might have been in a pretty pickle this morning. 
You’d had considerably more than was good for 
you, even before I left.” 

The last phrases came through the open door, 
and Joan, deprived of her audience, had a moment 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 215 

in which to be astonished at some of the things she 
had said. 

She was not, however, permitted to brood very 
deeply ; for it was Sunday morning, and they had 
to discuss through the open door what to do with 
themselves. 

It was then that the telephone bell rang. The 
telephone was in Freddie’s room, and Joan almost 
at once heard an exclamation. 

“ What is it,” she asked, coming to Freddie’s 
door. 

Freddie had her ear to the receiver, and was 
saying “ yes ” repeatedly and with animation. 
Suddenly she covered the receiver with her hand, 
and almost whispered to Joan : 

“ It’s Mr. Royden.” 

“ How dare he,” Joan cried impulsively, and 
then stopped in confusion. 

“ What does he want ? ” she asked. 

“ He asks what we are doing to-day,” said 
Freddie, “ and he puts himself at our disposal —all 
that in inverted commas.” 

“ Certainly not,” said Joan. 

Freddie took not the slightest notice of this. 

“ Yes,” she said into the receiver. “ It’s awfully 
good of you. We shall be delighted.” 

“ He suggests Versailles,” she said over the 
receiver to Joan. 

“ Nothing would induce me,” said Joan. 

“ We’ll be ready in ten minutes,” said Freddie 
into the telephone. 

She put up the receiver, and came dancing into 
the room. 


216 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ Don’t be silly, Joan,” she said. “ What’s wrong 
with a day at Versailles ? He’s bringing a car.” 

“ I don’t like Mr. Royden,” said Joan. 

“ All the more chance for me,” retorted Freddie. 
“ Don’t be so ready to turn things down.” 

They were still wrangling when a large open car 
swung round the corner of the street, and hooted 
under the windows of the hotel. 

Freddie went to investigate. 

“ Coming down ? ” It was Royden’s voice. 

“ Just a moment,” Freddie called. 

She turned back, and the two girls faced one 
another. An angry spot of colour was in Joan’s 
cheeks. 

“ I’m not going with Mr. Royden,” she said 
defiantly. 

“ Yes, you are,” said Freddie, who was begin¬ 
ning to lose her temper. “ If you think I am going 
to leave you here alone after last night, you are 
much mistaken.” 

“ I don’t see that last night has anything to do 
with it,” said Joan. 

“ Don’t you ? Well, it was a pretty poor show. 
That little beast would never have behaved like 
that if you had not been half tight.” 

“ Tight ? ” cried Joan indignantly. 

“ Tight,” repeated Freddie firmly. 

The motor was purring tactfully below. 

“It was Mr. Royden who pulled you through,” 
Freddie went on, “ and the least you can do is to 
be decently polite.” 

“It is Miss Weaver,” said Freddie through the 
window. “ I’m just persuading her to come.” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


217 


“ Give her forty seconds. Then, if necessary, 
I’ll come and help.” Again it was Royden’s voice. 

44 Well,” said Freddie to Joan, 44 are you 
coming ? ” 

44 No,” said Joan. 

44 You ought to be slapped,” said Freddie. 
44 Anybody would think, from the way you’re 
behaving, that there was something between you 
two.” 

Joan felt the colour beginning to come into her 
cheeks. That silly trick of the blood would betray 
her in a moment. At that instant, too, there were 
sounds from the street. Roy den was getting out 
of the car, and Freddie had eyes like a needle. 

Joan snatched her hat from the chair. 

44 Very well,” she snapped. 

Joan, during the drive to Versailles, obstinately 
regarded herself as an unnecessary third party. 
She sat stiff and sullen beside Freddie, while 
Royden, making himself comfortable on one of the 
front seats, with his back to the door, had them 
both under observation. As on the previous 
evening, he saw completely through the attitude 
affected by Joan and wondered how on earth he 
was going to discharge the trust which he had so 
fantastically assumed. He had decided as far as 
possible to ignore everything that made the 
position difficult, unless and until Joan made it 
impossible. Meanwhile, he thanked heaven for 
Freddie, and chatted pleasantly of the morning, 
of the fashions seen in the Bois, of the attractions 
of Paris and St. Cloud over whose terraces they 
passed, and of Versailles whither they were bound. 


218 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Joan, in spite of herself, was impressed by the ease 
and fluency of his manner, but it only made her 
the more bitter against him. It was a further proof 
that he neither cared nor remembered. Meanwhile, 
what was the object of this pursuit ? Did he think 
again to have his way with her ? Let him but try, 
and he should see. 

The heavy day advanced. They lunched and 
saw the palace. Then, after a further drive to 
escape the stuffiness of that forlorn interior, they 
returned early to Versailles for dinner. Royden 
was the whole while a miracle of friendliness and 
patience, not apparently perceiving when he was 
snubbed. 

Freddie was in a state of enchantment, from 
which she was sufficiently roused from time to 
time to hope that Royden would not take offence 
at Joan, and to vow that never again would she 
speak her a friendly word. 

At dinner Royden met a friend, who joined the 
party. The new-comer was acquainted with the 
officials of the palace, and he asked whether they 
would like to walk at nightfall in the gardens. It 
was, he said, the saddest thing in the world to 
stand on a moonlit night under the windows of the 
little pavilion of Marie Antoinette, for generations 
darkened and deserted. 

Versailles is at all times sad, proclaiming itself 
as the background of a pageant which will never be 
restored. Its long lines have the fundamental 
austerity of the French spirit, its decorum broken, 
if at all, with a considered playfulness, a formal 
merriment. Its fountains and the statues that 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


219 


adorn its symmetry (themselves symmetrical) 
enliven it with the gaiety of people gathered to¬ 
gether as for a brilliant ceremony. Here even the 
forest is caught back to frame an impeccable design, 
and the water stands or flows in obedience to a 
faultless etiquette. It is the formalism of the 
eighteenth century made manifest in stone, a 
setting for academies and courts, embodying the 
spirit of degree and epigram, proclaiming an age 
of ordered magnificence and splendid artifice. 
To see this place, even in sunlight, without the 
disciplined splendour it was designed to frame, is 
to feel the passing generations more vividly than 
before any ruin or obvious monument of antiquity. 
The ghosts are so palpably there in the pride of 
velvet and lace and flashing wit, their philosophy 
flattered with the stones and trees grouped for 
their passing, their laughter frozen into the 
nymphs and turtles of the garden, their reverie 
perpetual in the glimpse of a huge urn lonely at 
the end of a formal glade. 

But to-night there was a sadness in those gardens 
which transcended the melancholy of a vanished 
brilliance. It was an evening of mist, which at 
times was almost a fine rain. The dark lines of 
the palace, the darker lines of the trees still keeping 
their frigid ranks as decreed by the regal architect, 
the endless formality of terrace and fountain and 
artificial glade, were visible under a low moon, 
but they w r ere less insistent than by day, and 
nature came creeping back to resume her ancient 
authority. 

They descended from the terrace, and walked 


220 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


towards the pavilion. There, standing awhile to 
appreciate the commonplaces that never grow 
stale, of the passage of time and its changes, they 
found the air full of the melancholy reed-like music 
of the frogs. 

They came back by a devious way, guided by 
Royden’s friend. For a moment they paused while 
Royden descanted on one of the mighty urns of 
the garden, finding in it the whole spirit of seven¬ 
teenth-century France—the magnificence, the 
severity, the assurance, the deliberate and classic 
perfection. The artist had placed it in a triangular 
clearing, and obliged you to approach it by three 
broad alleys of tall trees, from each of which it 
showed to perfection. Almost one could hear the 
courtly praise of the fine gentlemen who had 
strolled that way generations ago, pausing in their 
talk of the latest play or the latest news from the 
Low Countries to appreciate the cunning of the 
architect. To-night it showed clear against the 
sky, so that you could just see the green and yellow 
lichens incrusting its marble, and the rank grass 
that grew raggedly at the foot. 

The two men stood together in sympathy, and 
Joan, impressionable to the mood of the place, 
and unwillingly interested in Royden’s exposition, 
held back to listen and admire. Freddie, who was 
more sensitive to the wet grass and the lightness 
of her apparel, fidgeted and moved away down the 
alley. 

A moment later Joan noted distastefully that 
Royden’s friend had joined Freddie, and that she 
stood alone with Royden by the urn. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 221 


She hurried forward to^catch the other pair, but 
Royden laid a hand on her arm. 

“ What do you want with me ? ” she snapped. 

A moment ago Royden had been celebrating 
the courtliness of Versailles. But Versailles was 
extinct, and this was a living girl whose story, 
though not in the grand manner, was more actual. 

“It is just this,” he said firmly, “ I shall con¬ 
tinue to do what I did last night.” 

“ I hope you don’t expect me to be grateful,” she 
replied. 

“ On the contrary, I expect you to be disagree¬ 
able.” 

“ What right have you to interfere ? ” 

“ None whatever.” 

“ Isn’t it rather late in the day,” she inquired. 
“ What is it to you, anyway ? Are you jealous, 
perhaps ? ” + 

“ I wish I had that excuse,” said Royden. 

“You realise that your behaviour is perfectly 
ridiculous.” 

“ I haven’t quite lost my sense of humour.” 

“ Then why do you bother me ? ” 

They stood facing one another under the urn, 
her vivid question falling back like a stone from 
that grave silence. 

“ It is very simple,” said Royden. “ I am sorry 
for what happened. I am determined that it shall 
not go on.” 

“ It is not much use being sorry,” she said. 

There came now almost dignity into her manner, 
but it dropped almost at once to a plaintive despera¬ 
tion. 


222 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“^Nothing matters now,” she went on. 

“ Of course it matters,” he said sharply. “ Don’t 
exaggerate.” 

“ It is easy to say that,” she said, “ but you 
cannot just rub it out and begin again.” 

“We can make the best of it.” 

“ You are hardly the person to help.” 

Freddie and her companion had turned in the 
dark alley and were waiting. Joan moved forward 
to overtake them, but Royden obstinately con¬ 
tinued by her side. 

“ Last night I was able to be useful,” he per¬ 
sisted. 

Joan stopped a moment in the path. 

“ I won’t have it,” she said, “ do you under¬ 
stand ? I won’t have you, of all people, telling me 
how to behave. I know now what to expect, and 
I am well able to look after myself.” 

Her mood, waspish and ungoverned, was 
firmly rooted in the sense of something irretriev¬ 
able, which gave it force ; and Royden, even as 
he smiled inwardly at her assumption of inde¬ 
pendence and worldly sufficiency, and though he 
chafed at her refusal to meet him in any way, was 
too nearly touched to be either angry or amused. 
He saw the pity of it, even though he felt that he 
would like to give her a good shaking. 

“ You are scoring heavily to-night,” he sighed. 
“(.You hold the honours.” 

“ Honours! ” she exclaimed, dwelling on the word. 

“ Don’t be so bitter,” he urged. “ And please 
don’t imagine that you are able to look after 
yourself.” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


228 


“You might at least give me a chance,” she 
snapped. 

He saw he must somehow break through her 
pretences. They were overtaking Freddie and her 
companion, who were now walking on. He stood 
resolutely in the path, and held her a moment by 
the arm. 

“ Listen to me, Joan.” 

She faced him, heavily defiant. 

“ I have told you I am sorry, but we won’t go 
into that. Anyhow, I feel responsible. All this 
about your knowing the world, and being able to 
look after yourself, is nonsense.” 

“ Indeed.” 

He was through her defences now, and she 
could only be pert. 

“You know yourself that it’s nonsense,” he 
continued. “ People don’t grow up in a few days. 
Drop this pose of knowing everything about every¬ 
body, or it will land you in worse places than where 
I found you last night. Realise that you are still 
merely an infant.” 

“ An infant ! ” she flashed. “ Then what are 
you ? ” 

“ I am talking about you. If you insist on 
behaving as you did last night, it is clear that 
someone will have to look after you.” 

“ Not you, at any rate,” said Joan. 

They were walking some ten yards behind 
the other pair, and now it was Joan that 
stopped. 

“ Can’t you understand ? ” she cried, the real 
girl emerging at last in a passion. “ I cannot bear 


224 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


to see you or to be with you. It brings it all back 
and makes it possible.” 

He stared at her aghast, as Freddie, by this time 
desperately curious as to what was happening, 
called them urgently forward. 


CHAPTER XI 


§ 1 

T HE conversation with Joan had been 
inconclusive as regards the action to be 
followed, but, in spite of the pretences 
to which she had clung, she had left him at last 
faced with the truth. He could not undo his work 
simply by keeping her out of cabarets, and lifting 
her from the jaws of disreputable hotels at three 
in the morning. Nor did Royden, who at least 
was honest with himself, imagine for a moment 
that he could so trivially atone. He had done her 
an unreckoned mischief, and she hated him for it. 
She could not bear to be reminded, or to feel that 
such a thing had been possible. So far she was 
justified, and, for all her petulance, had gone 
nearer than he to the heart of the matter. 

But she need not of necessity be further spoiled. 
It was still possible to prevent her present affecta¬ 
tions from biting into her character and deforming 
her sweetness ; to unmask her cynical pretences 
before they hardened into a genuine attitude. For 
the moment she was a child, strutting in sheer 
bravado. It was absurd ; but it was pitiful; and 
it was dangerous. The pose would of itself become 
a reality if it were allowed to continue, and in any 
case it was a pose that invited mischance. He 

225 


226 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


began to wonder how often the facile descensus of 
the modern girl had begun and continued in just 
that way. 

What, nevertheless, could he do ? He had spoken 
seriously to Freddie on the way back, referring to 
her desertion of the previous evening, and warning 
her that she would be called to a strict account by 
Barbara. Meanwhile, as best he could, pending 
Barbara’s return, he would continue to hold a 
watching brief. 

Barbara’s return exercised his thoughts more 
continuously as time advanced. Only one thing 
was possible : to behave as though nothing had 
happened at Bruy ere. When he thought of 
Barbara, at last accessible, perhaps ready to 
admit him to the intimacy he desired, he could 
not control the hope that all might yet be well. 
Nevertheless, he did not write to her, and he had 
often to confess that he was afraid. He was not 
thinking of a possible discovery of the secret he 
shared with Joan. With the assurance that marked 
his blunders, not less than his successful intuitions, 
he put any such discovery out of the question. He 
had always assumed that no reasonable woman 
could ever be brought to tell, and that no wise man 
ever felt it necessary to confess. There had been 
some hitch between Joan and Nicholas; but 
nothing serious need come of it. She would 
marry Nicholas, and be happy, and Barbara need 
never know. Meanwhile he was genuinely anxious 
that Joan should not be compromised, moved 
partly by simple compassion, and partly by an 
instinct to save his conscience. He wanted to 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 227 

reduce to a minimum the consequences of his 
act. 

He could not imagine his meeting with Barbara. 
He might determine to ignore what had happened. 
He might even claim that he had given an eye to 
Joan in the sense of her letter. But when it came 
to the point, he could not see himself happily 
responding to a friendly advance with that secret 
unadmitted. He mocked the scruple, but it re¬ 
mained and dashed the promise of the future. 
Yet the alternative was impossible. To tell her 
what had happened would be sentimental folly, a 
mere sickness of conscience for which his will must 
find a remedy. Would it, moreover, be fair to 
Joan ? The secret was not his own. He was 
sealed from confession, and the only question 
remaining was whether or not he should try to 
win Barbara, or creep in dishonour from the 
enterprise. 

Meanwhile, Freddie and Joan, preparing for 
work, were exchanging views, not in a friendly 
spirit, on the events of the preceding day. 

Freddie had a right to be out of humour. She 
had been very sweet to Hoyden, and her deport¬ 
ment and conversation, she told herself, had been 
impeccable. Nevertheless, Royden at the last 
moment had chosen to linger in a wet alley with 
Joan, who had behaved the whole day very rudely, 
and had contributed nothing to the feast of reason. 
Royden, moreover, had scolded her for leaving 
Joan to her own devices after midnight of the 
previous day. Fie had told her to be more careful 
in future, and to let him know if Joan were diffi- 


228 LOKING AFTER JOAN 

cult to manage. Freddie was unused to such 
behaviour. 

“ It is all very well,” she was saying, after 
several unsuccessful attempts to draw Joan from 
a superior silence, “ but you can’t deny that he is 
uncommonly interested in you.” 

“ It can’t be said that I encourage him,” said 
Joan. 

“Not obviously,” retorted Freddie, “ but I 
should very much like to know why you were so 
suddenly smitten with all that damp scenery 
yesterday evening, and why he should be so vastly 
concerned about your moral character. Anyhow, 
it’s pretty poor for me. I don’t expect to be turned 
into a sort of chaperone just yet. It is a bit 
previous, and I was rather inclined to tell him so.” 

“ It would be more to the point,” said Joan, 
“ if you told him to mind his own business.” 

“ Isn’t that up to you ? ” Freddie inquired. 

“ I did what I could,” said Joan. 

“You were certainly a long while about it,” said 
Freddie. 

She had finished with her mirror, and came to 
the door. 

“ Tell me,” she coaxed ; “ I could swear there 
is something terribly intriguing. The girls were 
saying the other day that he has painted your 
portrait.” 

Joan, pinning her hair, looked sidelong at 
Freddie. For a moment she was tempted to hint 
at dark events, and suddenly found herself wonder¬ 
ing how long it would be before she might perhaps 
be alluding to such things lightly, and even with a 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


229 


certain pride of emancipation. It was difficult, 
with Freddie for a listener, not to be carried away. 
Perhaps Freddie herself had similar confidences 
in the exchange of which there was more than a 
suggestion of great comfort. It might turn out 
that Royden was right, and that she had exagger¬ 
ated. Perhaps she was neither better nor worse 
than the other girls. Perhaps Freddie would just 
laugh, and tell her something interesting about 
that young secretary, concerning whom she had 
dropped hints the other day at Bruyere. He had 
certainly knocked at Freddie’s door at two in the 
morning. 

But the new attitude was not yet sufficiently 
strong for that. The real Joan, as yet unhurt by 
the pose she affected, ran from the suggestion, 
detesting it. 

“ I dislike Mr. Royden,” she said, “ and I 
resented his interference. I tried to tell him so 
yesterday. It was not my fault if it took rather 
longer than was necessary.” 

“ Fancy being able to talk like that,” said 
Freddie. “You ought to be wearing white gloves 
and the family jewels.” 

“ But you don’t know how to powder your nose,” 
she suddenly concluded, and, seizing the puff, she 
corrected the heavy hand of the neophyte. 

Freddie, in spite of ill-humour and a defeated 
curiosity, and a manner she did not always under¬ 
stand, was fond of Joan. Moreover, she was still 
secretly penitent for her defection, and Royden 
had frightened her. She definitely mounted guard 
for the next few days. 


230 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Joan, outwardly resentful, was secretly pleased. 
She needed the bravado and good cheer of her 
friend. Even the touch of vulgarity which she 
felt, but did not actually recognise, helped her to 
escape. Was there not a natural alliance between 
them which went deeper than superficial habit ? 
To all appearances they were embarked in a similar 
enterprise, and it was an enterprise in which 
Freddie was an old campaigner. 

Freddie, though she had ability and good looks 
and a cheerful disposition to assist her, began 
already to know that it was a losing battle. 
Already the shadow of defeat was upon her. 
Already there was a hint of exaggeration and 
effort in her daily pleasures. She had begun to 
flaunt her banners, to mock the destiny she was 
unlikely to escape. She would become each 
season a little noisier, a little less particular, looser 
of tongue, more flagrant of behaviour, talking 
more often and more freely of men and their ways, 
coming more into the smoking-room as they tended 
to look for her less insistently in the drawing-room. 
Every year she was less likely to be lifted from the 
commonplace by a genuine passion or a happy 
affection. She was not yet irreparably enslaved 
by the loose manners and oddities of her set, but 
she would gradually be subdued to the medium in 
which she lived. To the last she would show a 
brave front, but the emptiness behind the fixed 
mask of her defiant gaiety would be ever more 
difficult to conceal. Then people would wonder 
why she had fits of temper, and why her nerves 
were apt to be stretched. She would live chastely, 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


231 


but often wonder whether it was worth while, 
mocking at virtue with her friends, or affecting 
to value it for the freedom and spice it gave to the 
enjoyment of invented scandal. 

Freddie, in fact, embodied the destiny of a genera¬ 
tion which cannot be sufficiently honoured for its 
courage, adored for the virtues that are denied 
an issue, lamented for a fate that puts it at 
hopeless odds with life. 

Joan could not define what it was in Freddie 
that marked her as a natural ally. Nor, happily 
for herself, did Freddie realise a tenth of what was 
latent in their fellowship. But the spirit was there, 
bringing them unconsciously together—brave and 
assertive, flying the flag of impertinent youth, 
touched with a hope that already knew itself 
forlorn, the spirit of tens of thousands of girls 
forced into an independence undesired but bravely 
met, a spirit perhaps more in need of a comprehend¬ 
ing sympathy than anything in the world, and 
certainly the most likely to resent it. 

Already the friendship of the two girls was excit¬ 
ing comment. Freddie’s livelier companions were 
wondering what she could find in the green girl 
who had been the special pet of Barbara Miers. 
The more serious souls were wondering how Joan 
could allow herself to be so easily corrupted, and 
said it was a shame. 

The gossips naturally failed to discover the 
real basis of this strange companionship. They 
were unlikely to divine the hidden simplicity and 
sweetness which brought these friends so near. 
The conception of them as crouching together for 


232 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


comfort like birds in winter, or of two children 
singing along a dark road to keep their courage up, 
would have appeared to them as simply moon¬ 
struck. They saw merely two girls, one of whom 
was vivacious and spent more of her evenings in 
Montmartre than was good for her, and the other 
of whom was nearly ten years younger. 

Joan flaunted her banners to some purpose 
during the days immediately following Versailles, 
but she took care to flaunt them in the constant 
company of Freddie, and for the most part in 
respectable waking hours. She stained her fingers 
with cigarettes, though the smoke got into her 
eyes, and discussed the relative attractions of a 
Manhatten and a Saratoga, though, if she had been 
frank, she would have confessed that she found 
them both equally nasty. She sat before a be¬ 
wildering succession of champagne coolers, and 
affected a preference for Mumm over Pommery, 
though she was still a little puzzled why certain 
wines were dry in distinction from their less arid 
companions. She referred in the presence of male 
partners to the clothes she had put on, or had 
neglected to put on, and the first category tended 
progressively to diminish in favour of the second. 
She would confide to Freddie that her previous 
partner in the boston had clasped her with un¬ 
necessary vigour (the poor fellow was only trying 
to save them both from disaster), and Freddie 
would agree that men were the limit. 

Meanwhile, the flaxen hair displayed its tem¬ 
porary wave in rigid defiance of wind and weather, 
and nature’s white and rose, nourished with 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


233 


vanishing cream and pied with the manifold 
resources of the Rue de la Paix, assumed an 
artificial bloom, dusted with the sterile pollens of 
the powder box and fragrant with distillations of 
the apothecary. 

It was towards the end of the week, when Joan, 
in the company of Freddie and two members 
of delegation, again ventured into Montmartre. 
It was an expedition recommended by the French 
member. He had said that the cabarets for 
foreigners were well enough, but that, if they 
wanted to see the real thing, they must come to 
the Lapin Agile. He had taken them over the 
summit of Montmartre, through endless narrow 
streets, up and down flights of stone steps, between 
deliciously squalid houses, past the white confec¬ 
tionery of the Sacre Cceur, down interminable 
alleys on the other side, till habitations grew 
scarce, and one knew that it was possible to meet 
an apache, and to have the throat cut with pro¬ 
fessional silence and expedition. 

Finally, they reached a wayside tavern, lit with 
a smoky lantern, and from a wicked little garden 
of stunted trees, descended into a veritable cellar, 
no bright imitation with painted walls and an 
affected rusticity, but a cellar of naked stone. 
There they found an ancient man, with a beautiful 
white beard, singing a quaint old song that told 
the story of the vine from its origin in the soil to 
the moment when it had rendered its last services 
to man. 

There was a company which sang the chorus. 

“ Poets,” said the French member, “ and 


284 LOOKING AFTER JOAN 

journalists and artists and students of the univer¬ 
sity.” 

There were girls seriously dressed, but with 
artificially white faces and red lips. They sat 
on boxes, and drank wine or beer from rough 
tables. 

Joan and her friends who were not dressed for 
the occasion, tactfully found an embrasure. 

The ancient man, when he had finished his song, 
which Freddie declared to be inconceivably ribald 
and improper, served them with wine, and col¬ 
lected money for the house. Fie had wicked little 
eyes, and a face with knobs in unexpected corners, 
lie had been there, said the French member, further 
back than anybody could remember. He was 
incredibly evil, and had been married seven times. 
The younger men of Paris regarded him with 
affection as the last of the troubadours, and would 
assemble there to recite unpublished poems and 
sing unpublished songs. 

The French member found it interesting, and the 
others found it odd. Pale youths in black with 
comely hats and flying ties declaimed at intervals ; 
a girl sang a song her lover had just composed ; 
the ancient man contributed further ballads with 
choruses that roused the company to a jolly hum¬ 
ming and the waving of glasses. Every now and 
then someone would come to join a group, or to 
find one of those tragic girls with the white faces 
and red lips. 

But it was chilly, and the boxes on which they 
sat, though admirably in harmony with all the rest, 
were unyielding. Freddie reminded the French 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


235 


member that she was thinly clad, and that she 
would probably have a cold in the morning. 

They left the cellar by way of the little stunted 
garden. 

Joan felt that she would not soon forget the pale 
youths in black with the comely hats and the 
flowing ties, or the girls with their white faces and 
red lips. It was all so obviously more real than the 
places where foreigners were exploited by assiduous 
waiters, and, quaintly enough, after once overcom¬ 
ing her preliminary tremors (for the place was 
sinister in its appointments), she had felt drawn 
to these young people. They too had a defiant 
air, a bravado in the face of life, which touched a 
sympathetic chord. Nor was she wrong. The 
pale youths would probably never find a publisher. 
They came bravely to declaim in a cellar the lines 
they had written in a garret. They were full of 
illusion, and had yet to learn that the hand of life 
was heavy, and not very skilful in its handling of 
things fragile. 

Joan did not know very much about it, but she 
had the secret of youth which goes towards youth 
and comprehends. 

Freddie was growing mercifully less accessible 
to poignant revelations. She saw only the damp 
cellar, the wicked old man and the oddity of the 
clients. 

Joan, to cheer up Freddie, suggested the cabaret 
of the gypsies in grateful memory of its warmth 
and colour. Freddie said that, if it were really 
lively, they must certainly go, if only to throw off 
the atmosphere of their previous adventure. 

Q 


236 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


The French member agreed. It was a place for the 
barbarous foreigner, but the gypsies, who had 
caught the ear of Paris, made it almost worth while 
for the civilised. 


§ 2 

Barbara reached Paris early that evening, but 
not early enough to find Joan at the hotel. She 
had driven straight thither from the station, and 
taken a room next to her old quarters. Looking 
at once for her friend, and finding that Joan’s 
door was open, she entered for signs of occupation. 

She thought at first she must be mistaken. 
La Vie Parisienne stared at her from the foot of 
the bed. That, however, was a trifle. Joan’s 
dressing table was another matter. Barbara, after 
contemplating it for a moment, went into Freddie’s 
room and rang up Royden. 

“ Is that you, Hugh ? ” 

“ Yes, just arrived. . . . Can you tell me some¬ 
thing ? . . . I was sure you would do your best. 
It is this. Where are the private theatricals this 
evening ? ... No, only a hasty inference ; I have 
just seen Joan’s dressing-table. . . . Yes, simply 
amazing. All the perfumes of Arabia, and at 
least seven different pots of food for the skin, 
including that stuff you rub in when you want to 
be ravishing with marble arms . . . Yes, the room 
ought to be sealed and disinfected, and you cer¬ 
tainly ought to have written to me about it. . . . 
That’s all very well, Hugh, but how far has it gone ? 
. . . Only skin deep ? Well, that’s bad enough. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


237 


... I shall put her into a Turkish bath, and have 
a Dutch auction of the chemical appliances next 
door. I shall also wring Freddie’s neck. Where 
are they to-night ? . . . Well, if it’s no use trying 
to find them, I suppose we must leave the sweet 
things to another evening of guilty splendour. . . . 
Yes, I will dine with you in half an hour, if you 
haven’t dined already.” 

Barbara put up the receiver. 

On her way back to the corridor she paused in 
contemplation of the two dressing-tables. She 
smiled a moment, and then suddenly there was a 
sad look in her eyes, and she declared herself 
strangely. 

44 Poor little wretches,” she murmured. 

At dinner she found Royden strangely pre¬ 
occupied. Concerning Joan he was painfully 
reserved. 

44 I did my best,” he said over the coffee ; and, 
goaded by much inquiry, he told the story of the 
rescue (Barbara would hear of that in any case), 
and of his expedition to Versailles. 

44 It’s unrequited affection,” he concluded. 44 It 
will be all right when Nicholas returns. Mean¬ 
while, you must make up your mind to find her 
intractable. I thought it best to play providence 
by deputy.” 

44 Are you alluding to Freddie ? ” 

44 Freddie is the guardian angel, moulting a 
few feathers at the wings, but usually quite 
safe.” 

44 1 know all about Freddie,” said Barbara a 
little sadly. 44 Her name is Legion.” 


238 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ May we talk about something else now ? ” 
said Royden. 

Now that he was again in her company, with that 
letter of hers in his thoughts to bring her almost 
within reach, he knew that now or never must he 
adventure, carrying out in her presence the decision 
he had reached in solitude. Already, in fact, he 
had begun to do so, inevitably acting the lie 
by implication in his disingenuous references to 
Nicholas and Joan. 

“ Change the subject by all means,” said Barbara. 

“ You wrote me a letter,” he ventured. 

“ That is hardly a change of subject,” said 
Barbara. “ The letter, so far as I remember, 
recommended you to give an eye to Joan.” 

“ There was a postscript,” said Royden. 

“ I have a weakness for postscripts,” Barbara 
confessed. 

“ I have often wanted to discover a weakness, 
Barbara, but I have always rather assumed you 
were impregnable.” 

“ Always ? ” 

Royden at last took the impossible step. 

“ I once behaved like a fool,” he said. “ I hope 
some day you will be able to forget it.” 

Barbara looked at him kindly. 

“ I shouldn’t worry about that, Hugh. It 
might happen to anybody.” 

“ It seems that you don’t really dislike me,” 
Royden continued. 

“ Was that in the postscript ? ” 

“ It was,” he assured her. 

“ I wonder how it came to be there.” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


239 


“ I could not quite make out. It seemed to be 
quite irrelevant.” 

“ In that case, it must have been rather 
important.” 

He leant across the table, and laid his hand a 
moment on her arm. 

“ How much may I build upon it, Barbara ? ” 

Barbara looked at him curiously. She was not 
prepared for so direct an attack. Always since 
his first disastrous outbreak he had been so entirely 
the intellectual companion, personally a little 
remote. A faint suspicion that his glittering way 
with her might be a mask was more quickly and 
more strongly confirmed than she had anticipated. 

“ I am sure you are much too wary to build 
upon a weakness for postscripts,” she fenced. 

“ Don’t you advise it ? ” 

“Not till we have strengthened the founda¬ 
tions.” 

“ Will you help me to do that ? ” he asked. 

“ I feel about it like the Sultan when they 
brought him a new religion : if this thing he of 
heaven it will grow” 

She looked at him frankly affectionate, confess¬ 
ing that she liked him, and that she was willing 
to let her liking increase, if it would, to something 
on which they both might be able to build a dearer 
relationship. 

Royden had entered upon that conversation 
with diffidence, but it beckoned him forward to a 
happiness that mounted with each succeeding 
phrase. He had at last broken through. He had 
referred openly to the scene of his humiliation, 


240 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


thus defeating the vanity which had held him 
paralysed, and freeing his spirit to fly level with 
her own. He wanted to be rid entirely of that old 
burden. 

“ I have often wanted to refer to that silly 
business in the studio,” he said. “ It must have 
been a case of possession.” 

“ I am glad it was possession. I could not bear 
it to be just a bad habit.” 

“ I could never even bring this particular horse 
to water. He always jibbed, and usually threw me 
into an argument with you on the ways of men 
and women.” 

“So that is why you were always quarrelling 
with me ? ” 

She was touched by the thought of this proud 
fellow flying from his hurt vanity, and disputing 
perversely in order to find relief. 

She felt it very possible in that moment to 
encourage the weakness she had for him into 
something positive and vital. She was not ready 
to think of him as a lover, but there were all the 
ingredients. She enjoyed the chiming of their 
wits. She admired the artist; her imagination 
was peculiarly sensitive to his achievement, and 
the assurance with which he followed his inspira¬ 
tion. She acknowledged him handsome in the way 
she most approved. And now to complete the 
possibility of an adequate enchantment, he sud¬ 
denly assumed the very human aspect of one who 
had suffered in silence for her sake. The instinct 
she had against him was in that moment almost 
wholly disarmed. Her suspicion that for this warrior 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


241 


of the arts woman would never be more than a 
relaxation was rudely shaken. That had been 
merely the chatter of a man more deeply moved 
than he cared to acknowledge. 

The inference was obvious : she could not escape 
the fact that he was in love with her. She did not 
run from it in any false alarm. On the contrary, 
she faced it with a characteristic frankness, finding 
in herself an interest, almost an excitement, that 
brought with it zest and colour, a gratification 
which refused to be suppressed, together with a 
genuine anxiety to deal fairly by him, and to avoid 
either the raising of false hopes or needless dis¬ 
couragement. 

“ It is a great comfort, Barbara,” he was saying, 
“ that you always take the obvious for granted. 
You know what all this means.” 

“ But I don’t in the least know what to say 
about it,” she replied. “ It will have to be the 
Sultan over again : if this thing be of heaven it will 
grow.” 

The repeated phrase was a warning, but he 
put it firmly aside. His love for Barbara was of 
heaven, and it would grow—even in a bad soil. He 
could not afford to encourage a doubt on that 
score with Barbara in front of him, an unusual 
softness in her eyes, a little serious in her concern 
for him—that winged quality he loved in her sub¬ 
dued to the feeling of the moment. 

He smothered the warning, but it corrupted his 
mood. Into the joy of finding her accessible, and 
the sheer delight of his admiration, there writhed 
a streak of the man who had taken Joan. Even 


242 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Barbara was now within his reach. Had he not 
always maintained that any woman might be 
won, some by a swift appeal to commonplace, 
some with a little tact. Once or twice in a lifetime 
it was necessary to put forth a serious effort. 
But in the end she was there, immemorially at the 
chariot wheel. 

He turned in loathing from a mean whispering 
which rustled into silence somewhere in unfathom¬ 
able darkness. Such thoughts, he reflected, came 
unbidden to all men. They were of the abyss, 
where deeper than the plummet of poet or philos¬ 
opher could sound, the sick evil of an ancient 
world slowly suffocated, away from the bright 
surface of conscious life. 

He divined that it would be wise to say no more 
that night. Barbara was touched ; her imagina¬ 
tion was stirred ; she would turn to him swiftly 
once that generous nature was kindled. 

He talked of indifferent things. The emotion 
of the hour and the troubled reflections of the past 
few days softened the glitter of his conversation, 
and gave it a depth which Barbara was quick to 
note. She wondered how far she had misjudged 
him. Did he systematically conceal emotion 
under a careless arrogance, lifting the veil only 
for her at this eleventh hour of his destiny ? It 
was a thought that put him in a new light, and with 
which, being human, she could not fail to be 
gratified. She could not bear the least suspicion 
of injustice, and it dangerously softened her to feel 
that she had not, perhaps, been fair. In reaction 
from a fancied blindness to hidden qualities, she 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


243 


was now disposed to find in him new virtues at 
every turn. How tactfully, for example, he had 
abandoned the personal note on seeing that she 
was genuinely unready to sustain it. Was this 
the man she had regarded as embodying the 
marauder’s view of women ? 

Such a frame of mind was not at all being in 
love, but for Barbara it was the way by which 
love would ultimately arrive. For her it must 
come from an illumined intelligence, a quickening 
of the faculties. She would not kindle upwards 
from the senses, but downwards from the imagina¬ 
tion, and already her imagination was tinder. 

Well might Roy den feel that the prize of his life 
was now within his reach. 

He watched her as he talked and as she measured 
him anew. He was aware how each instant she 
admitted a fresh plea on his behalf, and allowed 
her heart to open more widely to his appeal. 

He could have sat thus indefinitely, tasting the 
rare pleasure of that gradual approach. It was 
the wooing for which he seemed at that moment 
to have waited for as long as he could remem¬ 
ber, beside which all other suits must be tedious 
and vulgar. 

But the restaurant was now empty, and the 
waiters were piling chairs for the closing hour. 
The spell must needs be broken, to be renewed, he 
hoped, elsewhere. 

Barbara did not contradict him when he hazarded 
that it would be rather a shame to go home. 

He asked if there were anything she would 
particularly like to do. 


244 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


There was only one thing it seemed in which 
she was particularly interested. All Paris was 
going to hear the gypsies who sang in a cabaret 
near the Palais Royal. 

Royden called a taxi. He had in that heavenly 
hour forgotten everything but Barbara. 

They had arrived at the narrow door with its 
dingy lantern before he remembered that he had 
been listening to the gypsies on the evening when 
he had suddenly become a knight errant. 

§ 3 

He caught sight of Joan and her companions 
immediately on entering the cabaret. 

He did not point them out to Barbara. He 
wanted, against all reason, to defer the moment 
of her discovery. He even arranged that Barbara 
should sit so that she would not be facing them. 
Then, having done what he could, he sat and 
waited for the moment to strike. 

Barbara had enjoyed several of the gypsies’ 
songs, and had already had occasion to wonder 
at the pyrotechnieal display of the man with the 
big dulcimer. 

Royden could see Joan with half an eye. He 
was fascinated into regarding her as a figure of 
destiny, waiting for him there in the shape of a 
doll with waxen cheeks and painted lips in some 
puppet play in which he was bearing a role 
allotted and unescapable. 

There was a pause in the music, and Barbara 
turned to survey the room. Royden saw her face 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 245 

suddenly change, saw her also make to rise from 
the table. 

“ What is it ? ” he asked disingenuously. 

Barbara sank back to her chair. 

“ Tell me,” she said in a kind of wonder, “ is 
that really Joan Weaver over there ? ” 

44 Let me break it to you gently,” said Royden. 

This time she definitely rose. 

44 What are you going to do ?” he asked. 

44 It must be stopped,” said Barbara. 

It was thus that Joan, preoccupied an instant 
before with her vanity bag, suddenly saw a flame¬ 
like figure descending upon her. The first impulse, 
wholly natural, was one of glad recognition, a 
feeling that the dear past had returned with 
Barbara smiling upon her, and Nicholas waiting 
somewhere in the background. The second, also 
natural, was a dreadful consciousness of how she 
looked. The mere sight of Barbara killed the 
cabaret with its reek of wine and smoke and 
cosmetics. But it was the third impulse that pre¬ 
vailed, an impulse to play the part she had assumed, 
not to break down, as it were, before the public. 

44 Hello, Barbara ! ” she said languidly, 44 1 
think you know everybody.” 

She indicated the young men, who rose, and she 
nodded coolly at Royden, who was seen standing 
behind. Another bottle was mentioned. 

Nobody quite knew how it happened, but the 
whole party was outside the cabaret in less than 
five minutes, and in less than another minute 
Barbara and Joan and Freddie were driving home 
to their hotel. 


246 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


It was further arranged by the time they rang 
the bell of the concierge that Barbara should 
resume her occupation of the communicating- 
room. Barbara had very clearly resumed 
control. Freddie at once removed her property, 
and Joan found herself at last alone with 
Barbara. 

Barbara had as yet not shown by so much as a 
glance that there was anything at all unusual or 
displeasing in the late encounter. Joan, neverthe¬ 
less, felt as though she had been caught and 
scolded. What was far more serious, she knew 
she looked a sight. She hated herself in the glass 
for a full minute upon entering her room, seeing 
herself as one might see a stranger. 

She realised with horror that she had known 
something rather like it in the village bar at Mead- 
well, where a young lady with many finger-rings 
had, as long as she could remember, scandalised 
the mothers of the village by wearing silk stock¬ 
ings on impossible occasions, and never refusing 
to take port w r ith a friendly lad. 

She was lost in this bitter disliking of herself 
when Barbara entered unobserved, and after 
standing a moment by the door came and placed 
an arm on her shoulder. 

“ Well, dear ? ” said Barbara. 

“ I have been doing my hair in a new way,” Joan 
hastened to explain. 

“ I thought there was something different,” said 
Barbara. 

Apparently in absence of mind, Barbara began 
to finger the bottles and jars on the table. She 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


247 


picked them up onelby one, studying the labels 
with an interested air. 

“ I don’t think I altogether like it done like 
this,” said Joan. 

“ Don’t you ? ” said Barbara. 

She had put her nose to a pot of rouge, and was 
delicately smelling it. 

“ One tries things,” said Joan. 

“ It is a good rule,” Barbara observed. 

There was a pause. 

“ I have been seeing a lot of Paris,” said Joan 
at last, desperately moved to make some conversa¬ 
tion. 

Barbara was reading how a certain production 
nourished the skin and strengthened the muscles, 
thus abolishing any tendency either to wrinkles or 
a double chin. 

“ All sorts of funny places,” continued Joan. 

Barbara continued to betray no sort of interest. 
She understood Joan sufficiently well to wait for 
her, knowing that this would be quicker in the end. 
She knew that Joan, fighting outwardly against 
surrender, was inwardly beaten. This had been 
obvious by the way she had looked at herself in 
the mirror. 

“ Everyone has been most attentive,” said Joan. 
“ I’ve had a splendid time.” 

Barbara was examining with absorbed curiosity 
a case containing seven different kinds of instru¬ 
ments for the finger nails. 

“ Attentive ! ” she echoed. 

“ You know what men are,” said Joan. 

“ I know a little,” Barbara confessed. 


248 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ They are all alike,” said Joan. “ I have found 
that out.” 

“ In ten days ? ” said Barbara. 

“ One can learn a lot in ten days,” Joan darkly 
insinuated. 

“ Well, don’t be too sure,” said Barbara. “ I 
sometimes think that men are like the Japanese. 
It is difficult to tell one from another till you know 
them better.” 

“ I am not sure that I want to know them 
better,” said Joan, almost tossing her head. 

Barbara, not yet suspecting a tragedy, looked 
at the child, who did not want to know men 
better. It had a hard defiant face, almost extin¬ 
guished by the art of the coiffeur. It stood by 
the dressing-table, nervous and fidgeting, but 
for the moment very stubborn, and inclined to 
be fractious. 

“It is always well to get up a subject 
thoroughly,” said Barbara judicially. 

Joan, inwardly faltering more pronouncedly 
as her manner hardened, began to take down her 
hair. 

“ It depends on the subject,” she decreed. “ I 
guess I know as much as is necessary about men. 
Anyhow, I don’t want to know any more.” 

She was plaiting her hair now in a thick coil. 
It was a marvellous transformation, and Barbara 
began to feel that her Joan was almost restored. 
She was suddenly moved to come to closer quarters. 

“ Have you heard from Nicholas,” she abruptly 
inquired. 

Joan coloured. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


249 


44 No,” she said. 

“ Why hasn’t he written ? ” said Barbara. 

It was a calculated cruelty, but Barbara did not 
know exactly how cruel it was. She assumed 
that Joan had taken to the coiffeur and the cabaret 
and to generalisations about men to drown the 
sorrows of a childish quarrel. 

44 Why should he write to me ? ” Joan objected. 
44 1 expect he is much too busy.” 

44 Then you don’t yet know very much about 
men,” said Barbara. 44 Only the lazy ones are 
ever too busy to write.” 

44 Nicholas isn’t lazy,” protested Joan indignantly. 

44 Then you will have to invent another reason.” 

44 1 haven’t thought about it,” said Joan. 

Under her assumed indifference, she was vehem¬ 
ently asking why Barbara should harp persistently 
upon Nicholas. It was unfair. It brought her 
back to realities, and soon she would not be able 
to stand it. 

44 There are cables from him in London already,” 
said Barbara. 44 1 heard about them just as I 
came away—very secret and frightfully unpopular. 
They also seem to indicate a quick return.” 

44 Is Nicholas coming home ? ” 

It was a strange cry, in which there was surprise, 
pleasure, and consternation. 

44 At any moment,” said Barbara. 44 It might 
almost have been Nicholas to-night in the cabaret.” 

Joan seemed to shrink into a size smaller. 

44 Yes,” said Barbara, who had duly noted this. 
44 1 don’t think he would like the new style of hair¬ 
dressing.” 


250 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


She was still investigating the pots on Joan’s 
dressing-table. 

“ He would find it disconcerting,” Barbara went 
on ; “ like getting to know you all over again.” 

Suddenly Joan snatched a pot from Barbara’s 
idle hands. 

“ I wish you would stop poking about among my 
things,” she flashed. 

And suddenly in a fit of temper she flung the 
pot violently into a waste-paper basket. It 
broke, and a sticky mess oozed unpleasantly. 

They looked at one another a moment, Barbara 
watchfully quiet, and Joan with bright dry eyes and 
a heart that beat ungovernably. 

“ What is it, Joan darling ? ” Barbara said at 
last. 

“ Nothing,” said Joan, turning away. “ I only 
want to be let alone.” 

She clenched her hands. 

“ Why will nobody let me alone ? ” she exclaimed. 

Barbara looked a moment at the rigid nervous 
figure with concern, but as yet without any real 
alarm. This was what came of late hours and 
little sleep, and champagne and asperin and a 
lovers’ quarrel. All it needed was a good cry. 

“ That’s an easy one,” said Barbara. “ It is 
because we are fond of you. Even Hugh, the 
heartless, is inclined to be fatherly.” 

Joan faced her suddenly. 

“ And you think you know men,” she burst 
forth surprisingly. 

Barbara was taken aback, but decided to 
continue smoothly. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


251 


“ We all have something to learn,” she said lightly. 

She tried another way of approach. 

“ Nicholas ought to have written,” she said 
reflectively. 

There was no missing the immediate indignation 
with which Joan received this slighting remark. 
Napoleonically Barbara resolved to concentrate 
her forces for an attack upon a notable weakness 
in the enemy. 

“ I’m not sure that Nicholas has behaved at 
all well,” she cunningly continued. “ He paid 
you quite a lot of attention while he was in Paris. 
He has no business to go off and give no further 
sign of his presence for three weeks. I don’t 
wonder at your rather resenting it.” 

Joan’s eyes were flashing dangerously, and she 
had the air of one who waits for the first oppor¬ 
tunity to interrupt. She even opened her mouth 
once or twice. 

But Barbara proceeded firmly with her observa¬ 
tions. 

“ Men are like that, as you have probably 
noticed,” she slyly continued. “ They just play 
fast and loose, amusing themselves, and running 
off to the wars as soon as one begins to take them 
seriously. I thought Nicholas was an exception, 
but it seems he is just like all the others.” 

“ Cat ! ” Joan suddenly exploded. 

“ Oh, I know,” said Barbara. “ You do quite 
right to stick up for him. Women always stick 
up for the men who treat them badly—as, of course, 
you have also noticed.” 

“ You know very well,” cried Joan, now all 

it 


252 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


generous indignation, “ that he is the truest man 
that ever breathed. He has been too good to me. 
That was his only fault.” 

“ Well, you know him better than I do,” said 
Barbara. “ It rather looks as if he had kissed 
and run away. Sorry if I am wrong. You see, 
I don’t know in the least what happened at 
Bruyere.” 

Barbara was almost frightened by the result 
of her pricking. She expected a wild outburst 
in defence of Nicholas. She even felt it about to 
fall. Then, to her immense surprise, Joan’s anger 
faded, and at the reference to Bruyere she looked 
almost as though unexpectedly she had been 
struck in the face. 

1 don't in the least know what happened at Bruyere . 

The whole thing came back so vividly that she 
could hear the waves on the shore. At first it 
was Royden, and then it was Nicholas. The 
darkness lifted, and she heard the larks in the 
sky, and stood once again twisting her fingers, 
unable to tell. 

Barbara, from the bed on which she was now 
sitting, stared at Joan for a moment and was 
aghast. The thick plait of hair falling across her 
breast had restored Joan to the likeness of a 
child, and she stood wholly pitiful in the intensity 
of her young grief. This, Barbara could see, was 
no mere pique at a lover’s hesitation or withdrawal. 
Something had happened to Joan, who, in the 
effort not to eat her heart out, had painted her 
face in desperation, and clung to Freddie in order 
to escape from herself. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


253 


What could have happened ? Barbara was 
suddenly frightened, hardly daring to contem¬ 
plate the possibilities. She thought first it must 
be something that had happened in Paris. Why 
hadn’t Royden prevented it—whatever it might 
be that gave to the child that dreadful look of 
a person struck and not daring to strike back. 

But she had said something explicit to bring 
that look so instantly. She remembered now she 
had mentioned Bruy&re, where Nicholas and Joan 
had parted under a cloud. The inference on con¬ 
sideration was incredible, but it could not be 
avoided. This thing, whatever it might be, had 
not happened in Paris at all. Yet, at Bruy&re, 
there had been no possible opportunity that she 
could imagine. They had not been there for more 
than a long week-end. 

Scarcely an instant had passed since her last 
remark. Joan still stood with that smitten look 
on her face. 

Barbara leant forward, taking her by the hands. 

“ Come here, Joan,” she said. 

Joan allowed herself to be drawn beside Barbara 
on the bed. 

“ Something happened at Bruyere,” said Bar¬ 
bara. It was a question, but it sounded more like 
an accusation. 

“ You have no right to question me,” said Joan. 

Barbara flung her cunning to the winds. 

“ Joan, darling, I want to help you.” 

“ Nobody can help me,” said Joan. 

Her hand tightened on Barbara’s, but she kept 
her eyes fixed stubbornly on the floor. 


254 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ Nicholas knows ? ” asked Barbara. 

“ I wrote to him.” 

Barbara felt the dread tightening about her 
heart. 

“You wrote ! ” she exclaimed. “ Was it as 
bad as that ? ” 

She lifted Joan’s face between her hands, and 
looked into her eyes. For a while she met the 
stare of a defiant child, but suddenly there was a 
change, and the lids drooped. 

There was no mistaking those eyes. It was no 
light escapade that gave them that defeated look. 

Barbara rose and went to the window. She 
wanted time to control herself. Her first impulse 
was to rage against that mute figure on the bed. 
Was it always to be thus—everything that in her 
eyes was sweet and lovely to go down at a touch ? 
Were reason and loyalty never to prevail ? Would 
there always be this wanton treachery at the 
heart of life ? 

This girl too had, in clean justice, no possible 
excuse. There had been a man who had loved 
her at hand, on the point of bringing her every¬ 
thing she could desire. She had not, it seemed, 
been able to wait for that, but must yield to some 
immediate clamour. 

There was complete silence in the room. Joan 
sat listless, as when Barbara had left her. 

Barbara, turning to inveigh, found herself 
unable to strike. Her passion glanced off the girl 
who was there, to aim at a man unknown. 

She strode to the bed, and took Joan by the 
shoulder. 



LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


255 


“ Who ? ” she demanded. 

Joan did not look up. 

“ I can never tell you that,” she said. 

“ Does Nicholas know who it is ? ” 

Joan shrugged bitterly. 

“ Does it really matter ? ” she asked in reply. 

Barbara’s fingers tightened and shook on the 
slender flesh. 

“ You are right,” said Barbara. “ It might 
have been anybody. He just happened to be 
there.” 

The bitter scorn of this was like hot metal laid 
upon a wound. Joan went sick under the torture, 
and, turning from Barbara with a moan, crumpled 
up on her pillows. 

Instantly, in a passion of pity, Barbara melted, 
and in a moment had Joan in her arms, for a long 
while rigid, almost it seemed unconscious, and 
turning her head from side to side as though in 
physical pain. In the effort to soothe her back 
to the normal, Barbara found herself rocking the 
girl in her arms and talking as to a child. 

Relief came at last in a burst of tears, the first 
since the morning at Bruyere. 

Barbara held her close till the fit subsided, 
and afterwards sat through the night by her side. 

When at last Barbara left her, sleeping in the 
first light of the dawn, enough had been said to 
make the story plain. Barbara had achieved a 
partial understanding of what had happened, and 
a partial understanding must for the moment 
suffice. She could forgive Joan, because Joan had 
suffered, but she wondered, and must always 


256 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


wonder, at her offence. Such things were in 
nature and must be endured. They had the 
prestige of a fatal tradition, and must be accepted 
as a commonplace of human destiny. But she 
would never really understand that fascinated 
submission. She could only pity the victim, and 
hope to be avenged. 

It remained to find the man. To that office 
Barbara, creeping herself to bed as the first noises 
of the street were heard below her window, silently 
devoted herself. 

The field was limited, and Hugh Royden would 
doubtless be able to assist her. 


CHAPTER XII 


§1 

O N the Sunday evening when Joan had 
stayed with Royden in the alley at Ver¬ 
sailles, Nicholas, in the company of a 
local officer, was standing on a famous bridge not 
far from the frontier he had helped to draw at the 
Palais du Petit, Luxembourg. 

Already the panic had lasted for nearly a week. 
It had begun in the simplest way. Forty-eight 
days had been allotted for the evacuation, but by 
the time the decree had spread to the farms and 
villages the local officers of a power recently 
victorious had contrived that the period should 
be named as forty-eight hours. No mention was 
made of guarantees, and the population was left 
to infer from its knowledge of recent history what 
would happen if they neglected to hasten their 
departure. 

Nicholas stood at the entrance of the bridge. 
Night was falling. In that gently undulating and 
bare countryside the road was visible for miles. 
It went back to a city, slightly raised above the 
general level of the valley. The city had the 
setting sun behind it, and its minarets were black 
against an angry red. 

Forward from the bridge the road went on, to 
lose itself among endlessly barren hills. 

257 


258 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Normally this would have been a solitude, but 
to-night it was broken by a continuous procession 
which trailed from the distant city to the bridge 
and away into the desert. Darkness was falling, 
and it was already difficult to distinguish par¬ 
ticular features of the dark line. Nicholas was 
generally conscious of it as filling the twilight with 
a melancholy continuous rumour, made up of a 
lowing of oxen, the creaking of axles, the sharp 
note of a whip, or distant cries. 

Portions of the line, as they arrived at the 
bridge and passed the place where he was stand¬ 
ing, broke into detail. A stranger would have 
noted that the procession was formed mostly of 
women and children and old men. But Nicholas 
already found that inevitable. All the men of 
a fighting age had been sent away into the interior 
before the conference met, and the statesmen of 
Europe had felt it would be indiscreet to inquire 
too closely into their welfare. Such inquiry would 
have offended a victorious Power, and endangered 
the peace of the world. 

There was little weeping, except for now and 
then some rare tormented outburst, or the 
passing of a woman with tears running silently and 
unregarded. 

The people went forward for the most part in 
silence, their faces set hopelessly away from every¬ 
thing familiar. The strength of the fear by which 
they were driven might thus be measured. They 
were passing from the soil in which they were 
rooted, from the houses which had covered them 
for generations, from the last hope of renewed 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


259 


touch with their deported kindred, into a wilder¬ 
ness where there was neither food nor shelter, nor 
any hope of issue. They went forward blindly, 
not looking forward to the mute desert, but 
behind them to the fear of death. Such possessions 
as they carried emphasised the panic in which 
they had started, objects snatched and piled at 
random, without order or reason. 

There was something on the faces of the 
people which obliterated individual distinctions, 
and gave to them the look of having all been 
cast in the same tragic mould. Nicholas had 
read of hopelessness, and even imagined what 
it might be. But now he saw it on the faces of 
this people, making of it a procession of blank 
masks. 

Nicholas recalled certain incidents—the terrible 
cries of a woman giving birth to a child on the 
roadside, alone except for a daughter who was only 
ten years old ; the discovery of his first dead in the 
early morning. The horror of such incidents was less 
than the way in which they were accepted. Hardly 
an eye had been turned towards the screaming 
woman as the procession passed, and it was with 
difficulty that Nicholas had found one of her sex to 
remain with her. The dead were seen with in¬ 
difference. Nicholas, struck by their unnatural 
postures, had paused to look, and finding them 
apparently lifeless, had spoken to a man on the 
road. The man had looked at them a moment, 
expressionless. He had then descended into a ditch 
and, without a word, had removed the boots of one 
who was better shod than he. 


260 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Later Nicholas had talked with a gigantic old 
man with a white beard. He had with him a wife 
and daughter, and the daughter’s children. The 
wheel had broken away from his cart, and all their 
possessions had crashed into the ditch. He stood 
beside the road, wildly lamenting and loading as 
much as he could on the backs of the party. 
Nicholas had tried to persuade him to stay by 
his possessions, explaining that there was no 
need for panic or haste, that indeed there was 
every reason to stay, as relief was being organised 
in the city through which they had passed. 

The old man had looked at him as though a 
trap were intended, and, in spite of entreaty, had 
staggered away, bowed under a load of useless 
treasures, driving his ox before him, followed by 
his mute women and a wailing child. This was the 
last attempt of Nicholas to check the panic. 

For the last two hours he had been trying to get 
back to the city, but it had taken him an hour to 
cross the bridge, where the congestion was such 
that no one struggling against the procession could 
hope to make any progress except on foot. He had 
been obliged to leave his car on the other side. 

There were incidents of other days, in which 
Nicholas had played a part for which there was no 
precedent in his career of statistician and antho¬ 
logist. He wondered, when at night he had time to 
wonder, whether he had in a few days become 
another man, or whether this were really the old 
Nicholas transformed. He had shaken his fist at 
the officers of a friendly nation, and had broken 
many provisions of martial law. The officers had 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


261 


denied him transport. They had seemed to do it 
with a certain pleasure, and had shrugged when 
Nicholas indicated the roofs of a railway carriage 
crowded with clinging refugees, who would cer¬ 
tainly be swept to destruction in the first of the 
great tunnels. Such things would happen, they had 
said. There was no persuading these people to 
wait for the next train. 

Meanwhile, he was buying corn in the name of the 
High Commissioner, and this, according to the 
laws of conquest, was theft. The local authorities 
would have arrested him if the High Commissioner 
had not been so absurdly popular in so many 
countries of the west. All they could do, in the 
circumstances, was to make things as difficult as 
possible, and comfort themselves with the reflection 
that very little of the grain thus illicitly acquired 
was likely to reach its destination. 

He had been left behind by the High Commis¬ 
sioner in that city of the minarets over a fortnight 
ago. He had felt inadequate and very lonely as he 
had watched the train departing with the man on 
whom he had come tremendously to rely, and in 
his first dealings with the local officers he had been 
diffident and ineffectual. 

Two days later, however, the panic had started, 
and within a few hours he had almost lost the sense 
of his personal identity, being conscious of nothing 
but a burning desire to help and to get things done. 

He raged and censured, persuaded and flattered 
in half a dozen languages. He began to know 
when cunning would serve his turn, or when it 
would be well to require what he needed with a 


262 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


high hand. He was soon a leading spirit among the 
men on the spot who were organising relief work. 

It had seemed that, in grappling with the task 
with which he had been entrusted, he was not so 
much developing new qualities as discovering old 
ones latent to this hour. This, at last, was Nicholas 
Fayle, beside whom the complacent dreamer of 
yesterday faded into unreality. The ivory tower 
in which he had lived, refining on his emotions and 
systematising his thoughts, was falling. 

There was one night in particular. For three days 
he had wrestled with the authorities for permission 
to buy for the refugees corn which they had sown 
and reaped during the previous year, but were 
unable to remove. 

He had won at last, buying grain in the stack, and 
placing upon it the mark of the High Commissioner. 
This was the afternoon. Returning to the city late 
that same night, he had seen a blaze in the sky, 
and, having by then some knowledge of local 
politics, he had turned his car and raced it over the 
fields to the scene of his recent transactions. 

There was his corn, blazing to heaven, and not 
far away a figure that ran. He burst three of his 
tyres in pursuit, but the criminal was caught red- 
handed in the uniform of a conquering regiment. 
He understood in that moment how it might some¬ 
times be a pleasure as well as a duty to hang a man, 
and he openly deplored the fact that he lacked the 
necessary powers. 

He took the man’s papers, and turned him loose, 
vowing that he would have justice if he had to 
plead for it in person at the conference table. He 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


263 


would rouse the civilised world. He would prevail 
against the indifference of cabinets and revive in the 
councils of Europe a touch of the crusading spirit. 

From which it will be inferred that Nicholas, 
coping with realities, still had something to learn. 

He repeated his vow as he stood on that famous 
bridge watching the procession. It passed on or 
paused, with its hopeless faces and its low rumour. 
It was a moonless night, and soon the darkness 
covered that unutterable progress. It seemed as if 
nothing could add to its desolation, until suddenly 
he was aware that from the empty heavens there 
was falling a drizzle of cold rain. 

§2 

He struggled forward to the city, and reaching 
it an hour after nightfall, found a telegram from the 
High Commissioner in which he was asked to return 
at once to Paris in order to report on the situation, 
and to induce the assembled Powers to protest 
against the attitude of the local Governments. It 
was clear that virtually nothing could be done in 
the face of the present obstruction. 

He packed for his return with a heavy heart. 
His room lay just off the main thoroughfare of the 
city, and all night he could hear the passing of the 
refugees. 

The procession in the soft country roads, deep 
in dust, was muted. But here on the cobbles of the 
street it became a clamour. He could not endure 
the thought of leaving it to go on while he departed 
elsewhere, helpless to check or to relieve it. Never- 


264 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


theless, he recognised the wisdom of the High 
commissioner. Something might yet be done in 
Paris, and the High Commissioner was himself 
coming to take up the work on the spot. 

He smiled grimly, thinking of his return. The 
conference would presumably be expecting Nicholas 
Fayle with charts and diagrams and a red pencil. 
He would come as something of a surprise. He 
intended to introduce some new facts to its notice, 
including the papers of a certain officer in uniform, 
who had burned corn within sight and sound of the 
destitute. 

Anticipations of Paris relaxed for a moment the 
pressure of the terrible events of which he had been 
a witness, and made it inevitable for him to think 
of Joan. She came always to his thoughts when 
there was a respite. He had written to her im¬ 
mediately after his arrival. 

He recalled the night when all at once he had 
obtained the sure mood of peace and decision in 
which he had conceived his letter. Up to the 
moment of writing he had trod with increasing 
weariness the circle of thoughts and feelings traced 
for him on the night of his departure from Paris. 
The circle became continually fainter during the 
first days of his work for the refugees. He had had 
no time or energy for personal brooding, and he 
ceased for long intervals to be obsessed with her 
confession. Previous memories of Joan intruded, 
weakening the dominion of an ugly revelation. 

Then one evening, sitting in that very room, 
tired after a long struggle with the malice or 
indifference of those who were obstucting his work, 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


265 


he had suddenly suffered rather than attained a 
revelation. Or perhaps it was an old revelation 
renewed. It came to him in a familiar shape, the 
figure of Joan sitting opposite to him on the night 
of their dinner together in the Boi.s, at the moment 
of his first intuitive perception of her, and of his 
irrevocable dedication. He saw her again in 
amazing detail, the exact shade of the grey dress 
she had worn, and the glow of the red rose at her 
breast. He realised, as he saw her thus, that there 
could be no abatement or withdrawal. 

At once he had seized paper and pen, and had 
written the letter which, in a previous anguish of 
spirit, he had postponed. He suddenly knew 
beyond all doubt that Joan had suffered equally 
with himself. She stood, apart with him, in anger 
and grief at her incredible defeat. To whom and to 
what had she turned for comfort ? Barbara was 
absent, and he himself had made no sign. 

He could not understand how or why she had 
allowed herself to be subdued. But his conception 
of her began somehow to stand clear of the event. 
He could truthfully write that his love was un¬ 
diminished. It had even begun to assume a more 
urgent quality. She was less comprehensible, and 
yet, strangely enough, she was humanly nearer. 
She had been overcome by something incalculable, 
of which he could only measure the force by the 
fact that it had mastered her. He saw her still in 
the presence of that unknown peril. She lived as 
with an enemy, under a threat, in bewilderment, 
her will, once defeated, doubting perhaps of the use 
or effectiveness of a further struggle. She needed 


266 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


help in a contest with invisible powers. Nicholas 
was too constant a reader of the Greek not to be 
peculiarly accessible to this idea. It helped him 
with that impossible riddle of her surrender, and 
summoned him to her protection. The Cyprian 
had prevailed with her as with Medea, and his place 
was more than ever by her side. Against the living 
mortals he would stand with her in mortal fellow¬ 
ship. 

He contrived to express something of this in his 
letter, but he aimed chiefly at assuring her of his 
love, and insisting that he must come to claim her 
at the earliest possible moment. He would, he 
said, take no refusal. She had shown her love for 
him in her confession. 

Only very lightly did he touch on the problem 
that still baffled him : 

“ I implore you not to brood on what has 
happened. That would be worse than the thing 
itself, for it would touch you more nearly. All 
my heart is in this appeal: don’t, Joan dear, 
allow yourself to be embittered, or encourage the 
feeling that things have ceased to matter. 

“ I am to blame for not writing to you before. 
I have failed you a second time. The first was on 
that afternoon by the sea, when I didn’t realise 
that it was for me to win you then and there. 
My second failure was worse. I should have 
known at once that my love for you, which is 
always and for ever, was strong enough to include 
the event that came between us. I know now 
that it includes everything that is you, or could 
ever possibly be you. It will always be like that.” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


267 


Nicholas despatched the letter at the earliest 
possible moment, and, normally, it would have taken 
four days to arrive in Paris. It happened, however, 
that a local Power had need at that moment of 
certain information, for which it decided to search 
the outward mails. It was some time before they 
were released—not before the letter of Nicholas had 
been carefully read for a political significance. 


x 


s 


V ir- 


CHAPTER XIII 

§1 

N ICHOLAS was met by a courier at the 
Gare de Lyon with a message to the effect 
that the conference was holding a special 
session to consider certain aspects of the situation 
with which he had been dealing in the eastern 
extremities of Europe. 

The inter-migration treaty drafted by the 
conference previous to its recess needed ampli¬ 
fying with numerous provisions regarding the 
property and liabilities of the migrating popula¬ 
tions. 

It was presumed that Nicholas had returned to 
make a statement. It was important that the 
statement should not be such as to prejudice the 
negotiations, or to impede a friendly and general 
settlement of the entire question. 

Disturbing rumours had reached the conference 
as to the way in which the migrations were pro¬ 
ceeding. Very unfortunate telegrams had been 
received from the High Commissioner. It was 
possible that not only the inter-migration treaty, 
but the whole treaty of peace elaborated with 
such care, would be endangered if the question 
were not prudently handled. The negotiating 

268 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


269 


parties were susceptible. They would bitterly 
resent the least attempt to criticise their behaviour. 

There must be no failure at the eleventh hour. 
The position was, in any ease, difficult, and would 
become impossible if angry feelings were aroused, 
and if there were anything in the nature of re¬ 
crimination. Would Nicholas, before breathing 
a word to anyone of anything of his experiences, 
kindly confer with a celebrated statesman who had 
the whole question very much at heart ? 

Nicholas, receiving this communication, saw 
the hand of providence. Here was an immediate 
opportunity to fulfil the duty entrusted to him by 
the High Commissioner, to start the crusade, and 
to obtain from the assembled Powers an adequate 
gesture of reprobation. He drove at once to a 
hotel named in the message, and in the early 
morning, within an hour of his arrival in Paris, 
was conducted to the presence. 

He was a kindly statesman, in his youth a 
generous champion of the oppressed, usually to 
be found on the barricades. But long years of 
difficult service had broken his idealism on the 
wheel of practical politics. He had long ago 
surrendered to the powers of this world, with a 
frequent sigh for causes unavoidably lost, and 
occasional outbursts of rhetoric. 

He listened gravely to Nicholas for an hour, 
and inspected with interest the papers of the 
incendiary who had destroyed the corn of the 
High Commissioner. He had, he said, expected 
something of the kind. He had read all the 
cables. These things inevitably happened. They 


270 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


had happened for centuries. What did Nicholas 
propose to do ? 

Nicholas proposed to bring up the matter at the 
conference table, to exhibit the proofs, to arouse 
the public opinion of the civilised world, to insist 
that such things must cease, to proclaim it im¬ 
possible for the assembled Powers to stand by 
unmoved while women and children perished of 
hunger and exposure, to exclude from the comity 
of nations the Governments who tolerated such 
infamies, to denounce an international system 
which permitted States, honoured in the councils 
of Europe, to be the secret accomplices of pillage 
and massacre. He had seen incredible things. 
He had seen officers wearing a uniform which 
was everywhere received with respect, which no 
diplomatist would venture to suggest had ever 
been degraded by its humblest wearers, smiling 
and jesting on that fatal bridge of which he had 
already spoken at length. He had been obstructed 
in the work of relief, not merely by the secular 
enemies of the refugees, but by the officers of 
friendly Powers. He could prove these things. 
They must be disowned and punished. 

For a moment the eye of the statesman kindled. 
He remembered distantly the campaigns of his 
youth and prime. He saw himself for an instant 
addressing the united statesmen of Europe, an 
Urban of the twentieth century preaching a new 
crusade, eliciting from the nations the ancient 
cry, “ Deus Vult, Deus Vult.” 

The moment passed, and he was again a minister 
with an electorate behind him which wanted 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 271 

peace and a treasury that had no money for 
crusades. 

He began to speak, and Nicholas realised that 
his last illusion was destroyed. He had lived his 
last ingenuous hour, and now he was defenceless 
to reality. This was a harder blow, more variously 
devastating than any of his recent experiences. 
He had found evil, and assumed that evil could 
be destroyed. The enterprise needed only good¬ 
will. The world would rise against it and sweep 
it from the sight of heaven. He was learning now 
that evil must be tolerated that good might come 
(as the sanguine alleged), or that worse might not 
follow (as the judicious pleaded). A settlement, 
it seemed, must be effected. The conference 
must not break down. It would be unwise, it 
would, in fact, be criminally mischievous, for 
Nicholas to dwell too exclusively on some of the 
facts that had come to his personal knowledge. 
Of course, they were deplorable and distressing. 
Men who went out on such missions usually re¬ 
turned in a crusading spirit, but they as invariably 
appreciated the difficulties after a few days of 
careful reflection. No good could come of alluding 
to atrocities at a conference. It merely embittered 
the discussions. Counter charges would be brought 
from the other side, and there would be no end or 
issue to the matter. 

Nicholas would be asked to make a statement 
to the conference. The statement should be 
moderate and unprovocative. Something might 
be said of the refugees, a few facts and figures 
might be given. The question was of some im- 


272 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


portance and it must be discussed at leisure, and 
without exciting unnecessary passion. The con¬ 
ference would doubtless be happy to consider any 
statistics that Nicholas with his usual skill in 
the presentation of such material might care to 
submit. But emphasis should not be laid on the 
evidence he had collected of obstruction or malice 
on the part of the local officers. The strong 
expressions which Nicholas had used, and the 
sincere feelings with which he was inspired, were 
very natural in the circumstances. They did him 
honour. They would be shared by all who ap¬ 
proached the question in an impartial spirit. But 
it was, unfortunately, impossible for practical men 
of affairs to be ruled by the feeling of the moment. 
It was necessary to take long views, to look at 
every aspect of the question, to weigh the advan¬ 
tages of vigorous action against those of a masterly 
inactivity. The conference must be saved. Europe 
would then be at peace, and the wrongs inherited 
from war and conquest would gradually be 
remedied. 

Nicholas, if he addressed the conference, must 
recognise the importance of moderation. He was 
not being asked for a pledge, but it must be 
understood that his intervention would be in the 
interests of conciliation and appeasement. The 
cause which he had at heart had everything to 
gain from such a course. The High Commissioner 
would have a free hand as soon as peace was 
signed, and Nicholas himself might resume the 
work he had so loyally undertaken. His position 
might even (this with a shrewd attentive look) 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 273 

become something in the nature of a perma¬ 
nency. 

Nicholas awoke from meditation to wonder 
whether he was being bribed. He was to make 
a moderate statement to the conference, and his 
position might become a permanent one. Was a 
connection to be inferred ? On the whole, he was 
inclined to dismiss the inference. He had entered 
the room in a crusading spirit, and he had hardly 
had time to accommodate himself to quite so 
startling a change of atmosphere. Most of his 
attention, moreover, was directed towards an 
internal process which, in the drama of that 
critical interview, merited well the classical descrip¬ 
tion of a noise within. Something was crashing 
invisibly ; all that remained of his ivory tower 
was falling. 

He heard himself asking the ruler of men for 
time in which to consider the matter. The request, 
he noted, was not well received. It was not his 
part to consider, but to hear with deference and 
to obey. The conference for its success needed 
a moderate statement. There could be no question 
of its being allowed to hear anything that was 
at all inflammable. 

Nicholas respectfully intimated that he under¬ 
stood the alternative. Either he must agree to 
suppress the essential facts of the situation, or 
he would not be allowed to speak. 

This he noted was even worse received. Not in 
such terms could diplomatic conversation be 
usefully sustained. There was no question of 
suppressing facts. It was a question of the best 


274 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


method of presenting them. He was asked, in 
the interests of peace, not to intrude certain 
aspects. Those aspects would doubtless be present 
in the minds of the negotiators. 

Nicholas said he would consider whether he 
could give the necessary undertaking. He was 
pleasantly aware that the word “ undertaking,” 
which he repeated quite unnecessarily on taking 
his leave, was a canker in the diplomatic ear. 
There had never, it seemed, been any question of 
an undertaking. There had been a slight disagree¬ 
ment as to the terms in which certain information 
obtained by Nicholas should be conveyed to the 
delegates. Those terms must be generally agreed 
by the managers of the conference before any 
official statement could be made. 

Nicholas, as soon as he got into the street, 
wondered why he had asked for time. He needed 
no time to consider what he would do. His 
decision was taken as he recalled the passage in 
which the ruler of men had suggested that the 
conference might like a few statistics concerning 
the refugees. There was one thing on which 
Nicholas was henceforth clear and unalterable. 
He would never again have anything to do with 
statistics, nor would he ever regard as a reasonable 
being anyone who attached to them the slightest 
significance. Much in this new and surprising 
world w r as incalculable and full of doubt, but 
one thing was altogether assured. Nicholas Fayle 
would never again be seen spreading his charts in 
the presence of the peace-makers, or determining 
with a red pencil the frontiers of the world. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


275 


Fie went back to the writing-room of the hotel, 
and inscribed a brief note to the ruler of men. 
He had come, he said, to tell the story of the 
migrations. He could not address the conference 
without alluding to the tragic events which were 
taking place, and without giving to them the 
prominence which they deserved. 

He despatched the note, and at once drove to 
his rooms in the Avenue Montaine, and as he 
changed from his journey wondered what next 
he should do. The prospect of meeting Joan 
filled him with an excitement that grew with 
every moment of his realisation that she was 
near at hand, in the same city, at last accessible. 
But the work of the High Commissioner was 
urgent. He must do his utmost within the next 
twenty-four hours with the men who had voice 
and character. 

He decided to pass to the Luxembourg by way 
of the hotel where Joan was staying. It was still 
early, and the conference would not be assembling 
for another hour. 

On the way to the hotel he remembered an 
earlier occasion on which he had taken that route 
to the Quartier. It was again the night of the 
festival, after his first interview with the High 
Commissioner, with its premonitions of an undis¬ 
covered w^orld. Since then he had found reality, 
and it had assumed forms that were tragic. The 
girl he adored had come to him from another ; 
he had seen cruelty and malice work havoc with 
tens of thousands of helpless lives ; he had just 
beaten in vain against the even more terrible 


276 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


indifference of the normal world to the evil within 
its polity. Nevertheless, in spite of the disillusion 
of his recent pilgrimage, he was braced and fortified. 

This was reality ; and, though it hurt, it had a 
value and a promise. It was the stuff of which the 
world was made—not a matter for elegy or depre¬ 
cation, but a challenge to be accepted. Not many 
weeks previously he had been feeling his way 
uncertainly towards an illumination which had 
since transformed his whole conception of life. 
Instinct on the night of the festival had driven 
him into the streets, and he had approached the 
actual in his awakened feeling for Joan. This 
had been a step beyond his poets and anthologies, 
just as his quaint refusal of an official dinner at 
the eleventh hour had been the first instinctive 
reaction against a conception of public life, abstract 
and phantasmal. 

But he had gone far since that night of his first 
tentative escape. Joan, from a heavenly wraith, 
had become definitely a part of the life with which 
he had been brought into practical and vital 
relationship. He had to find her precious in a 
new way, not as ethereal and enthroned, but as 
sharing with him a temporal adventure, exposed 
to the touch of evil and subdued to the mystery 
of pain. She fell into the dark scheme which 
included an endless procession into the wilderness 
of homeless souls, while the busy world smiled 
and plotted, and itself crept forward to ends 
equally unknown. She had become the tragic 
heroine of a complete reality. Thereby he had 
changed, perhaps, but one ideal for another. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


277 


This, however, was an ideal rooted in life itself 
and admitting the worst that life could do. It 
was no longer the illusion of a recluse to be in¬ 
evitably shattered at the first assault of common 
things. 

The taxi had turned already into the narrow 
street, at the end of which was her hotel. He was 
as eager now as on the night of the festival. 

He asked for Joan, but it was Barbara who 
came down. She came gladly, and kept the 
hand he offered her, drawing him to a bench in 
the hall. 

44 She is here ? ” he began. 

66 Yes,” said Barbara, She got your letter 
this morning.” 

44 Only this morning ? And when did you 
return ? ” 

44 The day before yesterday.” 

44 She was all that time alone ? ” he said. 

It was the statement of a fact that appalled 
him rather than a question. 

44 Don’t worry,” said Barbara. 44 She is all 
right now.” 

44 She is safe ? ” 

44 Quite safe.” 

44 And well ? ” 

44 She will be well to-morrow.” 

44 But now ? Is anything wrong ? ” 

44 She is resting to-day. She had a bad break¬ 
down the night before last. I was with her all 
yesterday.” 

Barbara smiled at his eagerness. Nicholas had 
changed. She noted that the eyes had lost some- 


278 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


thing of the old inward look, that the face was 
bronzed with exposure, and that the lips had 
tightened as though he had caught a sterner 
habit of speech. 

44 I may see her ? ” he went on. 

“ For just a moment.” 

“ Is she as ill as that ? ” 

44 She is not physically ill. See her for a moment, 
and then leave her for a few hours. Your letter 
will do the rest.” 

At the bottom of the stairs, he paused, struck 
by something he had not hitherto noticed in his 
anxiety for Joan. 

44 All this,” he ventured, 44 must mean that you 
know more or less what has happened.” 

44 I know what has happened to Joan,” said 
Barbara. 44 There is only one thing I have failed 
to discover. Perhaps you can help.” 

44 No,” said Nicholas slowly, 44 1 don’t know 
who it was. I am not sure that I want to know. 
It depends on Joan.” 

44 Vengeance is mine,” said Barbara to herself 
as she preceded him to the first floor. 

She disappeared a moment into Joan’s room, 
and, returning, signed to Nicholas to enter. 

He saw everything at a glance, the bright room 
in rosebuds and green, the play of sunlight on 
china and mahogany, the apple green curtains, 
the white pillows, and Joan propped to receive him. 
He did not think anyone could have been so pale 
or any eyes so dark. They were full of inquiry 
which turned to softness as he came directly for¬ 
ward and stood beside her. His letter was between 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


279 


the fingers of her right hand, her two arms lying 
straight beside her, as though too heavy for lifting. 
He picked up the hand that was free, and thrilled 
to find it weigh upon his own. 

Suddenly it had life, and, incredibly, it was 
drawing him towards her, where he became con¬ 
scious of a rise and fall and a heart that beat. 
He did not quite know how it happened, but in 
the next instant her lips had come to his own in 
the first of their kisses. 


§2 

Joan was too tired to be anything but faintly 
happy. She had exhausted her problem during 
the days when, having driven it beneath the 
surface, she was outwardly the gay companion 
of Freddie. Her pain had thus been uttered 
indirectly, her life at that time being a hysterical 
merriment, more harmful than tears or a con¬ 
fessed unhappiness, and leaving her now that she 
was restored to a natural habit of life, utterly worn 
out. 

She was like a person returning to sensibility 
after being racked with pain under an opiate, 
the nerves remembering what the brain had not 
consciously endured. The scene with Barbara, in 
which she had at last abandoned her instinctive 
tactics of a wilful suppression, had been like the 
awakening of a patient under the knife, and for 
a moment she had collapsed under that awful 
recovery. It was now only a question of healing. 

She waited in her room, the letter of Nicholas 


280 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


still in her hand, its texture between her fingers, 
a material assurance that the lines she had read 
a few hours previously were no illusion. She had 
realised, on reading it, that the contingency she 
had refused to face, the fear that had compelled 
her to drive underground all thought of the event 
at Bruyere, had been the possibility that Nicholas, 
his romance dispelled, would of necessity abandon 
her. His love had been rooted in illusion ; she 
had destroyed the illusion, and the love must 
wither. 

Now that the fear of losing him was removed, 
she knew and admitted that it had been secretly 
destroying her from the first moment of his depar¬ 
ture. She could call it up into the light now that 
it was no longer terrible, frankly admitting that 
she could never have faced it without the assur¬ 
ance that his love endured in spite of all that had 
happened. 

Meanwhile, Nicholas spent the rest of that 
day in realising the smiling obduracy of established 
things. He arrived at the Palais du Petit, Luxem¬ 
bourg within a few moments of the assembling 
of the conference. He had been in Paris less than 
two hours. Not an hour had passed since his 
interview with the ruler of men. The doors, 
however, were already shut to his appeal. He 
was officially informed that as the conference 
was discussing the property rights of the emigrants, 
and was not at that moment concerned with the 
migrations themselves, it did not think it necessary 
to invite a statement from a representative of the 
High Commissioner. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


281 


The news had travelled swiftly. There are, 
indeed, things which conferences achieve with 
a peculiar promptitude. Already it was realised 
that Nicholas Fayle, statistician, had come to 
unfold a tale of horrors, and that he was recalci¬ 
trant to the voice of moderation. Within a few 
moments of his arrival he had begun to realise 
what it must have been like to fall from favour 
in an ancient court. Secretaries who had welcomed 
him with a smile and assisted him with his charts 
into the presence of the masters of the modern 
world were polite where they had formerly been 
familiar, and their masters had become unpre- 
cedently busy and inaccessible. Nicholas Fayle, 
bringing useful information to plenipotentiaries 
in need of facts with which to justify their plans, 
was a wholly different proposition from Nicholas 
Fayle, who apparently desired to intrude upon 
them the least convenient aspects of an arduous 
problem. He had suddenly become the wrong 
kind of expert. The conference had no need to 
be warned of difficulties. It needed men who would 
tactfully ignore them, and enable it to rise upon a 
suitable peroration. 

Nicholas, with his sharpened appreciation of 
things as they were, did not spend his time in 
vainly beating against a brazen wall, nor, after his 
interview with the ruler of men, did he imagine 
(he was growing to worldly manhood at a dizzy 
rate) that he had any trumpet to lay flat the 
defences of the modern Jericho. He confined 
himself to ensuring that as many delegates as 
he was able to reach should know the facts, 


282 LOOKING AFTER JOAN 

and to uttering his heart to the men of good¬ 
will. 

It was late in the evening when he received his 
final illumination. The conference was still sitting, 
desiring to make an end of a critical question. 
Everything was familiar—the great table littered 
with endless documents, the attitudes of the 
delegates, each with his secretaries and experts in 
attendance, the lackey at the door with his silver 
chain and sword of office, the huge candelabra of 
crystal and gold scattering light upon crude red 
and cruder green, and upon pigmies in black with 
pink heads. 

The matter and shape of the discussion were 
also familiar. The facts were such as he himself 
had handled with dexterity at that very table 
only a few weeks previously. The argument was 
impeccable, abstract and lofty. The names of 
justice, liberty and humanity were frequently 
heard. Issues were decided from motives purely 
disinterested and impartial. On the surface, it 
would seem to a casual stranger that this was a 
platonic dialogue among states of the world met 
together to found a new republic upon eternal 
principles of right. 

The scene had been always thus—a debate in 
which the real issues lay behind this formal and 
disingenuous exterior. Into the unreality of that 
false surface, it was dangerous to probe too far. It 
went incalculably further than the participants 
themselves could measure. It was not merely the 
trappings that deceived, so that when men spoke 
eloquently of the equality of nations it was known 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


283 


that they were referring to mineral concessions, 
or when they spoke of freedom and security they 
were claiming a territory. These were methods 
of speech, a professional trick that could be mas¬ 
tered and discounted in a few days by an intelligent 
practitioner. The unreality of the scene went 
infinitely deeper. It lay rather in the fact that 
these men who, seemingly, sat as masters to 
determine the destinies of the world, were only 
the more significantly the slaves of circumstance, 
moved by ancient wrongs, influenced by passions 
huge and obscure that thrust forward into an 
unknown future from a mysterious past. Nicholas, 
looking at the puppet scene, and thinking of the 
dark procession that wound slowly across the 
bridge into the desert, symbol of all the wrongs 
that are done under the sun, saw through the 
professional display, past the material motives 
which consciously inspired it, to a secret grappling 
of Ahriman and Zarvan, the serpent eternally at 
issue with the eagle, with men for their weapons 
and mankind for an ultimate spoil. 

From which it will be inferred that Nicholas, 
though brought into discerning relations with 
reality, was in no danger of becoming the kind of 
realist who accepts material facts as in themselves 
significant or adorable. His ivory tower built of 
illusion had crashed, but Nicholas, incorrigibly 
romantic, in need of a wider spiritual hope based 
on a wider vision, was already constructing it 
anew upon a recognition of good and evil, and a 
wholesome respect for the dark enemy which had 
played already for the soul of his beloved, the rustle 

T 


284 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


of whose sombre wings could almost be heard in 
that fantastical chamber. 

There was a stir and rustle at the great table. 
The president was ringing his bell to obtain silence 
for a final reading of the draft articles of guarantee. 
They were extraordinarily complete and generous. 
The migrated peoples might rest assured that, 
once settled in their new homes, an era of pros¬ 
perity, liberty and hope would dawn for them and 
for their descendants. The eye of Europe was 
upon them, and henceforth they would be pecu¬ 
liarly inviolate. 

The delegates rose. Worried faces relaxed in 
smiles and cheerful conversation. Opponents in 
the debate shook hands and congratulated them¬ 
selves on having reached unanimous agreement. 
Small questions of etiquette and phrasing were 
discussed as men discuss the moves they might 
have made in a game of chess that is finished. 
Everyone was happy, genial and relieved. 

Nicholas thought of the dead he had seen lying 
stiff by the wayside. It was five days since he 
had seen them. He wondered how many more 
might now be lying in the desolate hills beyond 
the city of his pilgrimage. 


CHAPTER XIV 


B ARBARA had worked late on the previous 
evening, and was thus entitled to a respite. 
She devoted it to the purpose she had kept 
continually in mind for the last forty-eight hours. 
She intended to discover, for her own satisfaction 
and for his discomfiture, the man who had dared to 
interfere with a girl who was notoriously under her 
protection. 

First she would consult Royden. He had a 
capacity for observation that might put her at 
once on the right track. He would be able to tell 
her if anyone had paid Joan particular attention. 

She would not need to tell Royden what had 
happened. She would simply get him to talk about 
the men at Bruy^re. There had been one or two 
South Americans comparatively strange to her, 
who had been rather more than familiar with 
several members of her party than she had liked. 

It was characteristic both of Barbara and Nicholas 
that neither of them had once thought of Royden 
as the marauder. For Nicholas the event was too 
painful to be associated with any friendly or 
familiar figure, and he was naturally one of those 
who, to the end of his life, would find it difficult to 
believe evil of someone he actually knew and greeted. 
For Barbara it would never have been easy to 

285 


286 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


suspect Roy den, even at the time when she had 
thought most hardly of his professed attitude to 
women. Such treachery was beyond the limits of 
her character. It had become quite impossible for 
her to dream of him in this connection since their 
intimate evening on her first return to Paris. Her 
feelings were running too steadily the other way. 

Finding she would be free during the afternoon, 
she called him up on the telephone. He had pressed 
her already more than once to come to the studio. 
This was her answer : she was coming at once ; she 
needed his advice on a small matter. 

Royden received the message in a mood that had 
prevailed with him since the last unfortunate 
encounter with Joan at the cabaret: happiness 
that Barbara should have come so near, bitter 
indignation that an unconfessed treachery stood 
between them, angry astonishment that even his 
happiness seemed to carry within it the seeds of its 
own destruction. He thought more than once of 
the small boy who had refused the purchased balloon. 
He had aimed the parable at Nicholas, and it seemed 
now to be striking himself. He feared his good 
fortune because he had not paid for it. Worse than 
that, his account with the gods was overdrawn. 

He still had no fear of a vulgar discovery. He 
had telephoned to Barbara both on the night of 
Joan’s collapse and several times on the day 
following. He had agreed with her that it was 
merely a case of nervous and wilful behaviour. 
Barbara had since informed him of the letter 
and arrival of Nicholas, and of Joan’s imminent 
recovery. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


287 


So that story was drawing to an end. 

He had been painting all the morning for relief, 
and the telephone had caught him at work. His 
easel stood by a long window, ordinarily blinded 
but now exposed, from which he had been looking 
out over roof tops which absorbed or reflected the 
sunlight spilled at intervals over the edges of heavy 
clouds. There had been a moment, not so long ago, 
when the effect of that falling cataract had caught 
him spellbound, when he had seen the light splash¬ 
ing down into the gloom, and scattering like rain 
from the tiles and chimneys. But it had been the 
effect of a moment, lost before he had got the trick 
of it. The baulked canvas confronted him now, 
glistening from his recent effort to catch the light 
as it flew. 

Telling the bonne to prepare tea, he took up his 
palette, and, finding no further hint in the sky of 
what he needed, sketched in a few extra chimneys 
on the left-hand side. 

The bonne entered with teacups, announcing a 
lady. 

Barbara came forward to the easel. He put 
down the palette and she gave him her hands. 

“ I am interrupting,” she said. 

“ Nothing very important,” he assured her, grimly 
indicating the canvas. 

“ Heavens,” said Barbara, “ it is positively 
frantic.” 

“ So was I,” said Royden. “ You see it lasted 
only a few seconds, and it was rather complicated.” 

“ Suppose I had arrived in the middle of it ? 
You would not even have noticed me.” 


288 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


Royden looked at her gravely. 

“ It would be a dilemma,” he said. “ You at 
the door and out there a sudden deluge of sunlight 
spilling upon the housetops. It would be a dreadful 
predicament.” 

“ I think I should come to you,” he concluded 
abruptly. 

“ But that would be perfectly disgraceful,” 
protested Barbara. “ Like Antony at the battle of 
Actium. My man must be a Lovelace.” 

She hummed the refrain : 

“ I could not love thee dear so much 
Loved I not honour more.” 

Royden sat beside her on the model’s throne, 
watching her as she removed her gloves. Her 
mood declared her almost plighted, for she had in 
her no touch of the coquette. She would not 
have played with the subject of his devotion 
unless she was becoming secretly sure of reward¬ 
ing it. 

He took instantly his advantage. 

“You have not come to play cat and mouse 
with me, Barbara,” he said. 

She laid a hand on his arm. 

“ No, Hugh. It isn’t one of my games. I 
suppose I am just being natural, which means that 
I like you to be fond of me, which means that our 
friend the Sultan was wise in not turning the 
prophet down.” 

Royden marvelled at himself. This was almost 
a confession that Barbara was prepared to let her¬ 
self fall deliberately in love with him. Neverthe- 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


289 


less, he sat there hesitating and afraid. He was 
absurdly prompted to change the subject. 

“ You needed my advice ? ” he began. 

“ Oh, yes,” said Barbara casually. “ I want 
you to tell me all about the men at Bruyere.” 

Royden suddenly found himself listening in¬ 
wardly. Where had he heard that sound before 
as of a small stone in the mountains which starts 
the avalanche ? 

“ The men at Bruyere ? ” he echoed. 

“ Yes,” said Barbara. “ They were few and far 
between, and there is one I am anxious to identify.” 

“ Any special characteristics ? ” 

“ All the special characteristics of a cur without 
any ancestors.” 

He listened now with difficulty, his ears full of 
an inward thunder. 

“ Let me explain,” said Barbara. “ Joan has 
been talking strangely about men. It rather points 
to someone at Bruyere. The infant has had some 
sort of shock. Somebody tried to hold her hand in 
the garden, or something of the kind. It was 
probably one of those South Americans. There 
were two of them, now I come to think of it, with 
rather woolly hair. Anyhow, I want to know who 
it was that dared to lay so much as an eye upon 
my own peculiar chicken. We need not make any 
fuss about it. Just find the fellow, and let me talk 
to him for five minutes. Then, if you still feel 
rather strongly about it, you can kick him into the 
middle of next week.” 

Royden, with a tremendous effort, was con¬ 
trolling himself outwardly. 


290 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


“ Give me something to go upon,” he said. “ One 
does not kick a fellow into the middle of next week 
without some sort of excuse. He may only have 
said good-evening in the manner of his country.” 

“ No, Hugh, it was more than that.” 

Her manner was grave, and he wondered mechan¬ 
ically how much she really knew. 

“ Is Nicholas informed ? ” he fenced. 

Barbara nodded. 

“ Isn’t it his business ? ” he asked. 

“ For special reasons I have come to you.” 

“ For special reasons ? ” 

“ Nicholas finds the subject a painful one, and 
Joan wants to drop the curtain. I am acting for 
my own personal satisfaction. There must be no 
scandal, but I want the punishment to be adequate.” 

“ Adequate implies a knowledge of the crime,” 
said Royden. 

Barbara hesitated. 

“You can keep a secret ? ” she said at last. 

“ Better than most,” said Royden. 

“ It was not for nothing that Joan collapsed the 
other day. We have all been utterly blind. She 
suffered at Bruy ere in the worst possible way.” 

“ Nicholas knows that ? ” 

“ Joan is an honest soul, and she is to marry 
Nicholas,” said Barbara. 

“ She has given no clue to the man ? ” 

“Not the faintest.” 

“ And you neither of you have any suspicion ? ” 

“ None whatever,” said Barbara. “ That’s why 
I come to you,” 

He looked at her for one intolerable instant to 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


291 


see whether this were not elaborate irony—a subtle 
torture deliberately invented, but she had come in 
perfect good faith. 

“ Both Nicholas and I are so incorrigibly ro¬ 
mantic,” she continued. “ Nicholas would expect 
him at least to have horns and a tail.” 

“ And you ? ” he said slowly, “ what would you 
expect ? ” 

Barbara shrugged. 

“ There ought to be some mark to distinguish 
them,” she said. “ It’s unfair that they should 
resemble the others. That is where you will be able 
to help me, Hugh. You probably know the signs. 
Did you at Bruy ere notice anybody in particular ? 
Someone who bulged unusually at the eyes, or with 
lips unnaturally red, or a hairy paw, or whatever 
it is that distinguishes the vermin ? ” 

Royden rose and went to the long window. 
Outside, the housetops still awaited the sunlight. 
For the last few minutes, like an automaton, he 
had put off the evil moment, but he knew that the 
cause was lost. He might still avoid discovery if 
he chose. He was apparently above suspicion. 
But the supreme irony of this last ordeal was too 
much for a conscience secretly sick. His will was 
broken, and he had only to accept the consequence 
of his act. 

He turned and came towards her. 

“ Barbara ...” he began. 

She looked at him, struck by a peculiar deadliness 
in his voice. 

“ You won’t have to look very far for your 
monster,” 


292 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


She rose and stared at him in slow amazement. 
His manner was premonitory. 

“ You mean . . . . ” 

She did not finish her question. 

She was suddenly aware of his attitude—an 
attitude of confession, the head slightly bent, the 
shoulders a little raised, and the hands thrown 
imperceptibly forward with the palms turned 
obliquely upwards and towards her. 

Even in that moment she could not help noticing 
that the attitude had a certain dignity. It was an 
attitude of confession, but it was the attitude of 
one who would make no appeal. 

She found herself unable to break the dreadful 
silence. Every passion died in her that might 
have found relief in word or act. Contempt, anger, 
indignation, all the emotions she had brought with 
her to the enterprise froze and perished in some 
outer darkness of the spirit. To utter here anything 
she might have said to a lesser man would have 
seemed like brawling at the seat of judgment. He 
was beyond anything she might say or feel, where 
no human voice or gesture could reach him. 

She mechanically gathered up her gloves, and 
turned to the door. Her dress caught in a teacup 
in passing, which was shattered. She did not even 
notice it, her mind full of the sight, at which she 
could not again endure to look, of Royden motion¬ 
less in that awful attitude. 

He did not move, even at the closing of the door. 
He was listening intently to her steps as they died 
away down the wooden stairs. At last the silence 
closed over her departure, a silence that would 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


293 


never again, it seemed, be broken. There would 
have been hope for him had she railed, but that 
silent withdrawal, as from someone who stood on 
the further side of a gulf, he knew to be final and 
complete. 

She had said nothing. She had suddenly become 
unreal to him. To know what she might have said 
had he remained within the range of her voice, he 
must remember how she had spoken of the 
imaginary criminal she had asked him to discover. 
This, however, would not suffice ; it was absurdly 
inadequate. His offence was, unfortunately, worse 
than that of the imaginary monster on whom she 
had so lightly emptied her scorn. She must add 
to it, before it attained the dimensions of his own, 
a treachery that had not even ceased with the 
offence itself, but had hoped to steal her heart 
with lying. 

The bonne entered suddenly, and at last he 
moved. 

“ Take all that away,” he said harshly, pointing 
to the tea things. 

He went again to the window, and stared out 
over Paris while the bonne fidgeted to and fro. 

His mood of resignation to justice passed, and 
he dashed into a mad rebellion. Suppose he had 
sinned against the light, as the poet glozed. Was 
not the place of Barbara, if she loved him and had 
human blood in her veins, there beside him ? It 
was a poor woman who would not be damned with 
her lover. 

But she did not love him. Discovery had saved 
her from that just on the edge. She would save 


294 LOOKING AFTER JOAN 

her soul, one of the wise virgins to the end of 
time. 

He was again alone, and the room was silent. 

He felt at that moment that, humanly, his life 
was finished. He had put himself beyond human 
sympathy; the woman who had come nearest 
him had withdrawn without a word. Was it 
possible for a man to live in that dreadful isolation, 
to carry undaunted that sense of being required 
to stand alone ? He must be a fine fellow who 
could carry the brand of outcast gallantly to the 
grave. He would need to be marked with some 
special sign to be conscious of a dedication to 
purposes enabling him to dispense with the ordinary 
human joys. 

He crossed suddenly to a drawer into which he 
had thrust, if he remembered rightly, a service 
pistol he had carried as a major in the Canadian 
army. It was providentially there, and there were 
cartridges as well. He thrust a couple into the 
magazine, and came back to the window. 

There was nothing to deter him. Barbara would 
not turn a hair. “ Vermin ” was the word she had 
used, and she had not known the worst. Ordinary 
human life held nothing further. He had valued 
his experience, only to find himself a fool and a 
blunderer, wounding the innocence of a child as 
a sacrifice to his vanity, and striking a coward’s 
blow at the woman he loved. For memories he 
had the weeping of Joan on the sands at Bruy ere, 
and the silent withdrawal of Barbara. 

He put the pistol on a table that stood beside 
his easel. 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


295 


What would Barbara do if she saw him sitting 
thus, convincing himself slowly that there was 
nothing left for him but to use the weapon as 
efficiently as he knew how ? She would look at 
him from over the gulf he had put between them 
without a word. She would simply leave it to him. 
Why should she intervene ? She had ceased to 
understand or to care why he acted thus or thus. 

He raised his hand and noted that it trembled. 
He smiled at this, knowing that he was not that 
sort of man. This trembling was just a trick of 
the nerves. It was inconvenient just at that 
moment. He did not wish to be found like that 
fellow Robespierre with merely a broken jaw. 
He would steady those shaking fingers. 

He deliberately took a brush from the table. 
He had often found that in the flash of a sudden 
idea his fingers had trembled in just that way, but 
it had never needed more than a few strokes of the 
pencil to still his nerves and make his hand as firm 
as a rock. 

He dipped the brush and approached the un¬ 
finished canvas. What should it be : the cowl 
upon that chimney to the left perhaps ; and as 
well make a good job of it as it was to be the last. 

The thing was done, and his hand was now quite 
steady. Mechanically he touched the canvas here 
and there, a mere habit of the brush. Equally 
unconscious he stood back to see the effect of what 
he had done. 

“ Royden’s unfinished masterpiece,” he mut¬ 
tered. 

He looked long at those painted housetops, 


296 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


waiting for an illumination that now would never 
come, and in a spirit of bitter irony added a few 
strokes to the lifeless design, looking from the 
easel to the window with the quick sidelong glance 
of the painter. 

“ Merciful God! What was happening out 
there ? ” 

The wind in the upper spaces had drawn back 
the edge of a heavy cloud which had lain for the 
last hour right in the eye of the sun, and over its 
leaden sill a cascade of light was pouring. The 
housetops were drenched, transformed, and he 
had always loved sunlight; it was a passion with 
him. And he could see now just what he had 
missed on that previous occasion. 

“ Heaven send that it would last! ” 

The quick brush was already at work. Swiftly 
the moment passed, and already the glory was 
less intense. He moved abruptly to reach a 
distant corner of the canvas. The revolver was 
dislodged, and fell to the floor, where it exploded 
loudly. 

He kicked it impatiently away with his foot. 
His hand had not stayed a moment, or been 
deflected by the breadth of a straw, in the stroke 
he had made. 


CHAPTER XV 


k 


(t 


§ 1 

N r ICHOLAS, returning to Joan that evening, 
found Barbara in possession. 

“ We have been talking,” she announced. 
Subject ? ” Nicholas inquired. 

Things in general,” said Barbara. 

She went out abruptly, leaving Nicholas to 
realise that Joan, her dark eyes enormous in her 
pale face, was looking at him with an expression 
of inquiry. 

She tried for words in which to make the 
inquiry plain. 

How much does it matter ? Would he be able 
to forget ? Did he want her to say any more 
concerning what had happened ? She would tell 
him all he needed. She wanted him to know her 
without disguise. She could not bear to be loved 
with any reservations, to feel that there were any 
places in her heart where he feared to penetrate. 

Thus he pieced together the phrases, mostly 
incomplete, in which she revealed the fullness and 
simplicity of her love. 

He found it almost as difficult to answer her 
questions as she had found it to frame them. 

He did not want to go back. He needed no 

297 




298 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


particulars. The past mattered only as it lived 
in the present. 

44 I believe,” he said, feeling his way, 44 that 
there are things which happen because of us, and 
things which happen in spite of us. Sometimes the 
things we do really express us, and we grow more 
and more like those particular things as time goes 
on. But there are things which are mere perver¬ 
sities. They don’t express us at all, but go against 
our nature. These things drop away, leaving no 
permanent trace. They are bypaths in which we 
for a moment lose our sense of direction, till we 
scramble back to the road and go on as before.” 

Joan shivered, and drew close. 

44 People get lost in the bypaths more often than 
not,” said she. 44 Suppose I had never met you, 
or suppose you had been different ? ” 

With seeming irrelevance she added : 

44 1 want you to be very kind to Freddie.” 

44 Freddie ? ” 

44 She was my friend while you were away. I 
want her to come often and see us.” 

He tried to find the connection. 

44 Oh, I am lucky,” she cried with sudden con¬ 
viction. 44 The story does not usually end in this 
way. You didn’t see me as Barbara did. I should 
have gone on like that, getting more bitter and 
silly as time went on. It would have been with me 
as with scores every way better than I am.” 

Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. 

44 It’s a shame,” she said. 44 Yet no one seems 
to see it. Women are so terribly selfish—the 
happy ones, I mean.” 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


299 


He talked of the arrangements they must make 
for the immediate future. There were duties he 
could not neglect. He must go to England to 
collect funds for the refugees ; he must, if the 
High Commissioner needed him, return to assist 
personally in their relief. The best thing perhaps 
would be for Joan to return to Meadwell, and to 
prepare for her wedding in the following spring. 
He would take her over to-morrow if she were well 
enough to travel. 

This programme, accepted by Joan, was 
approved by Barbara, and the following day Joan, 
having marvellously recovered, waved a last 
farewell to her international life of independence 
at the Gare du Nord. Barbara was there, but it 
was to Freddie that Joan was observed to cling 
most obdurately at the moment of farewell. 

Nicholas made a serious effort to enlist English 
public charity for the cause he had so swiftly lost 
in Paris. It was a mission that contained further 
illuminating discoveries. He was plunged head¬ 
long into a tragi-comedy of rivalry and intrigue, 
swiftly learning that it was more important to 
know exactly to what degree, and in what peculiar 
fashion, one charitable society disliked another 
charitable society than to bring them useful 
suggestions for the relief of imminent distress. 
With infinite cunning he achieved a success which 
would have been impossible for the dreamer who 
had left London a few months previously. 

There followed a further visit to Eastern Europe, 
in which he fought for months side by side with 
the devoted servants of the High Commissioner 
u 


300 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


against famine, exposure and disease. It was not 
till the hard winter was over and the position 
greatly improved that he felt it possible to leave 
the work to which he had set his hand. 

He returned to England by way of Paris, where 
he stayed for a few days to make unusual pur¬ 
chases. The critics of Paris, he found, had only 
one topic of conversation at that time. In twelve 
months the name of Hugh Royden had come into 
unusual fame. Apparently nothing he could do 
went wrong. He was like a man enchanted. Two 
centuries earlier he would undoubtedly have 
incurred suspicion as having made some kind of 
transaction with supernatural powers. 

It had begun in the late autumn. His “ Toits de 
Paris,” exhibited later in London as “ Housetops,” 
had been the sensation of the Salon d’Automne. 
In Royden’s private memory it had another 
description. It was the sign of his dedication, 
setting him apart from normal men, sealing him 
with his own peculiar distinction and doom. It 
was afterwards noted that never again did he 
paint a picture of Notre Dame seen through 
spring buds or autumn leaves. There was another 
circumstance which did not fail to merit attention, 
namely, that he could never be induced to sell 
two excellent portraits. There was a girl in a 
mackintosh, in whichi 'the draughtsmanship was 
surprisingly good, and there was a girl with 
flaxen hair, which showed a masterly handling of 
flesh in sunlight. 

These portraits remained for years hanging 
framed on the walls of his studio. There was 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


301 


much sentimental conjecture as to what their 
presence might imply. Presumably he kept them 
there for remembrance, but whatever the remem¬ 
brance might be, it did not make him a more 
genial companion. 

Almost exactly twelve months after the confer¬ 
ence had first met in Paris, Nicholas and Joan 
were married. 

Barbara came specially to England for the 
ceremony. She had by that time, with Freddie 
at her heels, passed into the service of a permanent 
international organisation at Geneva. What sub¬ 
sequently happened to her there is interesting, but 
it would needs be another story. 

§ 2 

Nicholas took his bride to Italy. 

One of the moments he remembered best of those 
that brought her finally home, a moment matched 
in his mind with his first perception of her during 
their first evening together in the Bois, occurred 
on an afternoon express from Paris, and on the out¬ 
ward journey. They were travelling to the South 
after midnight, when already he had watched her 
to sleep, as the train noisily unravelled the long 
miles towards the Italian frontier, he was warned 
by the attendants that the carriage would not 
pass from the territory of France. There was a 
strike of the servants of the Sleeping Car Company. 
At Modane the passengers would have to descend, 
and there await such relief as might be afforded 
them by the Italian railways. 


302 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


He awoke Joan, and informed her of the immi¬ 
nent catastrophe. 

It was two o’clock when they reached the fron¬ 
tier, where they were thrust harshly forth into 
the night, together with some thirty or forty 
miserable passengers. 

Nicholas found a sheltered corner of the plat¬ 
form where, wrapped in furs and blankets, they 
sat on their luggage in the open, reclining at ease, 
Joan happy in the sense of his protection. 

It was bitterly cold, a cold that breathed upon 
them from distant heights, bringing with it the 
feeling that warm human life was something 
precarious and unusual, the freak of a genial 
moment which could not endure and was not 
likely to be repeated, a cold suggesting outer 
space and the absolute zero of dead worlds. 

At first it was dark, but gradually they became 
aware of the mountains. The surrounding gloom 
resolved itself into huge shapes, which very slowly 
took form and colour. The dawn increased im¬ 
perceptibly, till over the Alp that was facing 
them a light, which was at first a delicate green 
and soon was a violet which could be felt rather 
than perceived, lay upon the snow. Further down 
the mountain the darkness still remained. But 
it was a ranked darkness, in which it was possible 
to divine the forest that hung upon its flanks. 

Soon the Alps were visible on every side, and 
altering with each successive moment. That 
enormous transformation was the more impressive 
for its complete silence. There was no sound or 
any token of the power that was changing the 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


308 


world. Light and colour and form played giganti¬ 
cally upon the snows and forests without the least 
rumour or footfall to announce their presence. 
The dawn came noiselessly over the mountains, 
glided into the streets of the little village, awoke 
the houses and took possession. 

In the presence of that transcendent process, 
Nicholas felt that he and all his kind were but a 
mayfly episode. He had a direct sense of nature 
herself, her conditions and elements and powers, 
the slow vast gestures whereby her seas were filled 
and her mountains lifted. 

Suddenly he was aware that Joan had drawn 
closer, and that her clasp upon his hand had 
tightened. It was the irrevocable alliance of two 
hearts against all that stood beyond the threshold. 
Thus embraced they confronted the dawn, two 
souls huddling for comfort against that sense of 
implacable and indifferent power. 

Then, in reaction, Nicholas was taken with 
arrogance before the awful stride of the invisible ; 
he was conscious of a challenge flung to the senseless 
mountains and the frigid dawn. They two might 
be truly nothing in the face of that immensity, but 
in that small moment they were supreme. They 
could keep the instant warm and sensitive, and 
fill it with a joy, shared and communicable. 

Her head came back upon his shoulder, and he 
could see her dark eyes filling with the light that 
came at them over the violet snows. For a 
moment her look was fey with the infinite things 
that lay behind the dawn and hid within the 
marching of the pines. Then suddenly it was 


304 


LOOKING AFTER JOAN 


divinely lit with the love of one woman among 
millions of women for a man among generations 
of men. 

He kissed her cheek, and, finding it cold with 
the dawn, drew her closer yet, obliterating in 
that embrace all sense of the huge process that 
worked callously among the mountains. 

And in the morning they ran down merrily in a 
little train that carried them past tiny villages 
to cities old and warm with human life, where 
it was impossible to doubt for long that love was 
immortal. 


THE END 





















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